


Kurama

by cyan96



Series: the boy and the fox [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, Kurama and anger issues, Myth and backstory, None of these children understand shit about nutrition, The Power of Love and Friendship, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-22 20:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 82,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10704291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyan96/pseuds/cyan96
Summary: Namikaze Minato makes a mistake. Uzumaki Kushina makes a choice. Naruto ends up growing up with a red haired, foul tempered older brother who wants Konoha to be atomized, preferably yesterday.





	1. Messy situations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Kurama, Kyuubi no Youko, lord of the demons, smiter of continents and overall natural disaster is stuffed into the body of a human infant.

The last thing Kurama remembered, just before the world had shifted in a whirl of searing colour and then blackness, complete and total like a spill of deep, dark ink fogging his mind, was anger.

A momentous, seething sort of anger. The kind that boiled and hissed beneath the skin, stewing and stewing without an outlet to let loose. The kind of anger, that, when finally released, shoved away all traces of logical action for apocalyptic _reaction_ , because being crammed into something with the size and reasonability of a bug for a near century could do that to a fox. It crackled up his throat and made sparks grind in his teeth, a thunderous storm of a feeling that drew to a sharp pinnacle when that _little blond shit and his giant frog tried to seal him_ **again**. Kurama had been so, so close to freedom, so close to razing the bane of his existence into an unidentifiable crater in the ground.

Overhead, the night sky was a swathe of black, swirling with pinpricks of stars. The glow of Kurama's chakra flung harsh, deep shadows across the rock cliffs of the village. His nine tails lashed out, boiling the crisp air with the smother of red-orange fire, like the gleam of flaring coals.

A tug. A tear. Yin and yang split with a howl of rage.

Kurama felt the himself rip into two. Felt the disorientation as the architecture rushed up and half his power was dragged away.

And as Kushina's damned Hokage flashed through hand-seals, even with his higher mental functions devoted solely to smashing the village into smithereens, Kurama registered the threat. No. _NO_. That was unacceptable. If he was going down then he was going to latch on with both hands and claw this village down with him. One moment. Kurama needed just one moment. He aimed for the newborn that his other half had been sealed into, watched that despicable Namikaze hurl himself forward without second thought—

—and gutted the man with one swipe of his claws.

That done, he turned his attention towards the other, tinier problem.

_"No."_

Kurama turned his head to see Kushina, sprawled on the ground with a grim, terrible desperation painted in the tight slant of her eyes. Her chakra flared, recklessly wild, and bindings sprung into existence around him, pinned Kurama's haunches to the ground. He eyed them balefully.  One flick of his tails sent rock crumbling and dust clouds of debris into the air.

The chains snapped.

Kushina, for all her stubbornness, was human and dying, and Kurama wasn't seething and powerless at the back of her conscience.

He tilted his head and let a Bijuu-dama the size of the city swirl inside his mouth. Kurama had promised himself long ago that he would make them pay, all of them, ever since Uchiha Madara desecrated the vows of his ancestors even more than they had already been, ever since Senju Hashirama and Uzumaki Mito sealed him with brush strokes and ink and the twisted remnants of his Father's teachings. Raw energy condensed. Power, pure and undiluted, shone like a supernova at the height of its detonation.

Uzumaki Kushina _screamed._

For a single moment, it felt as if all the parts of him were being sheared apart piece by piece. Kurama trashed. Above him, his bijuu-dama hurtled upwards into the night sky, engulfing the stars and the moon in a flash of violet fire.

The world jerked.

Hundreds of stories above, the explosion shot out in a deafening shockwave. Heat and light and the sheer force of it trembled the air, rocketed the temperatures as the villaged rattled to its stone foundations. The ground beneath him shuddered. Dust and and stone fragments blinded his vision.

Then there was black.

 

* * *

 

He smelled thick, choking ash. Burning flesh and wood and brimstone stifling the air. A child's voice above of him, muffled and slight, barely passed the mark of adolescence in human years. "Two of them?" he asked. The words released crammed themselves between the gaps of disjointed gears, between the pinky-width fractures that clawed a chasm in Kurama's thoughts. It was a question. A _question_. But what was a question, really? And then there was an old man's voice, raspy and worn deep, familiar in a way that he couldn't quite place. Like dark sands. Caves so deep beneath the ocean there was no light. Like Gyuuki's rumbling sigh. Saying: "Yes."

Fire and brimstone. The air thick and boiling over with his own chakra, a presence so tremendous he could feel the reverberations. "What's in a question?" The Old Man Sage asked him. Kurama considered it with great concentration. He planted his paws into the lush grass beds of the Old Man's mindscape. A question. _A question. Hmm...  
_

"I am your jailor!" Uzumaki Kushina bellowed. The sky rippled at her snarl. Chains cuffed his limbs to a great stone slab. All around him, the grasslands and clear, cool bottle green lakes that made up Kushina's landscape swayed, and the wind flung her red hair back towards the great forests of her mind. "You will listen to me!"

Honey and cinnamon and just a touch of starlight. The ground beneath Kurama's paws, glimmering molten gold from the sun at the height of its ascension. Above him, the sky was stark and blue-washed, and to his sides the daffodils swung their proud malachite trunks, casting soft shadows against the ruptured earth. "Catch me if you can!" Kurama shouted, laughter bubbling up his throat. His paws hit earth. One long stride, two long strides: He was flying. Behind, the Sage let out a snort of good humor before tearing off.

"Catch you?" he said, all playful smiles and twinkling eyes. "Why I'll—"

_("I can promise you revenge," breathed the man. He had cherry eyes, like blood wine, scarlet moons and the language of the ancients was branded in quick, sharp brush-strokes in the black of his pupils. "This village has wronged you, has it not? Chained and derided like you are." And Kurama wanted to scream. Wanted to tell him: Go to Hell. He wanted to sink his teeth into the soft bone of the man's skull and watch brain matter leak red out of his ears—)_

 

* * *

 

He woke up to sound. The clatter of footsteps against hard concrete. Men and women barked orders far in the distance, the tremor of their voices grating harshly in his ears.

Everything was _loud.  
_

And fuzzy. He blinked open his eyes experimentally to... shapes. Many, many shapes, and weirdly fuzzy blobs of colour, as if there was sheen of water in the line of his vision, morphing images into  patchwork nonsense.

He squinted. A killer headache punched gleefully through his skull. That was... not good.

Actually, this entire situation was not good.

There was a thick, woolen fog blanketing his thoughts. He couldn't remember where he was. He couldn't remember the century. He couldn't remember his _name_.

And he had woken up _._

Bijuu didn't wake up; they didn't sleep in the first place. At least, not the way humans did, with their stifling flashes of incoherent darkness needed for rejuvenation. Sleep was closing his eyes and letting his senses stretch to the beyond. Down the rigid crust of the earth. Through the humm of gas particles. Feeling the quiver of chakra imbued in every tiny organism of this world, and the flare of their energies linked and shining in tandem; two hundred thousand million stars twinkling on earth, strung together into a constellation of life.

Darkness like human sleep was something he hadn't felt ever since...

Since...

Kurama scrunched up his nose in contemplation. The headache continued to sledgehammer through his head.

Since Uzumaki Mito and the key lines of her seal, looping rusted copper chains around him.

_Fuck_. 

With steadily mounting apprehension Kurama wrenched his limbs apart and attempted... nothing. His body refused to budge, which made perfect sense, in retrospect, because _his body wasn't his body.  
_

Kurama cursed, excepting fucking no, apparently he wouldn't even have that luxury, because his vocal cords scraped and screeched instead. The sound that rushed out was high and wailing—a human infant's scream. He closed his mouth so quick it was a snap. He didn't know whether to be horrified or... horrified at his situation. At this point, there was only horror. Indignation and anger had fled with their tails tucked beneath their legs.

A rush of vertigo, and all of a sudden the scenery changed. There was a big, ugly hat that Kurama could vaguely recognize even with his vision being absolute garbage, and a craggy voice above him, saying, "Hush, child."

The Monkey-Man's face was an unidentifiable blob but the voice and the chakra signature was all that was really needed for identification.

Kurama screamed.

He screamed just as loudly as Kushina had, when the blaze of his chakra ball had threatened to engulf her village and her son in twists of blue-red fire. That was all he could do, at this point in time.

He was—

_He was—_

Oblivion yanked him down by the scruff with one gnarled hand, and Kurama didn't try to stop it.

 

* * *

 

They placed him in an orphanage.

Kurama didn't know this until long time afterwards. Just that, when he woke up it again it was in a dark, rectangular room. The wooden beams in the low ceiling creaked beneath a tumble of plaster and half crumbled tiles, and when he breathed it was to the tang of decay, of dust motes and newly laundered cotton blankets that smelt of lemon soap.

A furnace of energy shifted drowsily at his side. Kurama's psychical body may have been stuck and useless, but his senses certainly weren't. He grasped outwards. Little blobs of human level chakra reservoirs flickered like fireflies outside the building. There was the whiff of mayhem that came back to him; anxiety and panic in the fluctuation of their chakra, an aching weariness that Kurama relished with deep satisfaction, all negative connotations.

Good. _Good._ Those stupid, arrogant tiny human fools. They had dared to chain him, and now this was their price paid in blood and sweat. Kurama let himself relax into the bedspread, feeling marginally more satisfied than he had a moment before.

Beside him, the energy furnace shuffled. Kurama paused. He let his senses reach out for a more complicated analysis instead of a quick scan, and the incoming revelation wiped his good mood away in a tide of red foam.

The energy bundle was Uzumaki Kushina's offspring.

He was together in the same, enclosed space as Uzumaki Kushina's hellion offspring. Who, if his memories were accurate, had the other half of him sealed away in his tiny, infant, belly. Uzumaki Naruto, the brat that had been the unknowing key to dragging Kurama into... whatever this situation was. He wasn't too sure himself.

He was going to _kill_ this brat.

In retrospect, that was a task easier thought then done.

Kurama tried, but his efforts resulted in absolutely nothing. The first, instinctive plan of action had been to to rip the brat's throat out,  but Kurama's entire range of movement was currently limited to making increasingly frustrated facial expressions and screaming his vocal cords hoarse. Kurama had been born fully functional and sentient, nothing like a human baby. Right now though he couldn't flop to the side, let alone operate his limbs into something like motion.

Then, realizing, what an idiot he was for actually trying to do this physically, those goddamn seals had warped his brain, he closed his eyes and _reached_. Kurama didn't care how durable the brat was, Uzumaki or not, sealed Yang-Half or not. One twist of his chakra would send both the brat and the entire building tumbling down in a spill of ashes.

_Come._

He reached deeper.

_Come on._

His chakra was there. Kurama could feel it, churning and present, but painfully out of touching distsance. It was like seeing through an impenetrable glass window. It was there. He just couldn't get to it.

A deeper, more desperate reach.

Kurama had always been able to access his chakra. For God's sake, he was a being _made_ of chakra. His thoughts were imprinted in them. Even if he were to die nature would once again assemble the loose pieces into something whole. Chakra was his hands and his ears and his breath.

Now...

Now it wasn't.

Now there was nothing. Just his mind, snarling and writhing in a container far too small and different to be anything akin to comfortable, completely severed off from the boiling mound of chakra that made up the rest of him. This was—it wasn't even an indignity! Indignity was being locked away at the back of some shinobi's subconsciousness, ignored and derided but whole.

This was sacrilege.

Burning wasn't even on the bucket list anymore. Konoha, Kurama decided with gritted teeth and a high, screaming snarl, was going to be  _atomized.  
_

Then Uzumaki Kushina's spawn made a short, huffing noise at his side. Kurama registered it in a haze of anger. Might as well start with this one.

He was going to systematically rip out the boy's organs. He was going to bite the brat's head off and feel the satisfying crunch of soft bone and flesh beneath his teeth. He was going to taste the blood-- human, Uzumaki blood —and he was going to enjoy it, because this brat and his lineage had degraded and degraded Kurama to some filthy animal and if they wanted him to act like some brainless, feral beast than, well, why wouldn't he give it to them?

He was going to—

Sleep. Fogginess.

Blackness again.


	2. The Months After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adjustment is not linear. In which Kurama debates his options and also screams at people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a long(think two years) long time ago, I wrote a thing for Nanowrimo. I didn't finish the thing, or even get remotely halfway, since sometime during the writing process the plot ideas decidedly to suddenly expand and eat my face, but I did get a very rough chunk of the set up finished. This isn't meant to be the most polished story you'll ever find, but I do hope you find it amusing. Happy reading!

Kurama hadn't realized how useless humans were in the first stretch of their pitiful, miserable existence until he became stuck in one. Both Mito and Kushina, by the time Kurama had come into unfortunate contact, were able to talk and fight and check their way through the truly arduous number of tasks humans needed to accomplish daily for basic survival. Kurama was a giant energy construct in the shape of a fox. He didn't need things like food. Or air. Or sleep.

He _hadn't_ needed things like food, or air, or sleep.

The main issue here was sleep.

It was this ingrained, abjectly useless evolutionary mechanism humans had, and it was utterly infuriating how it descended like a sledgehammer whenever it felt like. Which was most of the time. All the time. Basically every single time when Kurama felt like he was finally making progress on figuring out what the fuck had happened, sleep would cheerily kick his hypothesis out and lounge around the back of Kurama's skull until it sunk in.

The infant brain was too underdeveloped to handle the enormous influx of information that Kurama had collected over the centuries. Complex trains of thought would lead into headaches, erratic and stinging and completely foreign, and then darkness, like a very irritating off button. The same occurred with emotions. It didn't help that Kurama felt primarily in bursts of explosive rage, and the sheer weight behind them caused his stupid tiny brain to shut off completely.

Sleep was this human body's defense mechanism to prevent Kurama from frying through his neurons. It was also Kurama's arch nemesis at this point. He couldn't get anything—including a plan of escape—sorted out with it in his way.

When he wasn't sleeping, Kurama was screaming, eating, or trying with a potent, furious determination to _move,_ an effort that was unrewarded. The sheer inefficiency of this system was enough to make Kurama want to grind his molars into powder, but he didn't even, as of yet, posses teeth to grind. Evidently, whoever decided to engineer humans was both garbage at their job and an absolutely _nitwit._

Most of old his senses were gone. The new ones gained were pathetic imitations, and blurred, for the most part. Strange sensations crowded through his head in a screaming match. His hearing was dimmed into something small and insignificant—human decibel ranges—and he could barely pry open his eyes long enough to make out the fuzzy blobs of colour in moments of lucidity.

Adjustment was terrible. _Terrible._

Kurama was never going to be a very happy baby but the first stretch was the worst, for both himself and the people assigned as his caretakers. He didn't cry so much as he yowled, and the formula he was fed had the unfortunate habit of finding its way into people's faces.  All his energy was converted into the singular, feverish task of getting used to this stupid human shell, even going so far as to put off his plots and plans. It didn't make sense to focus on them when a raging headache from simply opening his eyes to light sent him back tonaptime again.

He still had his chakra-sensory ability, thank Father. That at least made up for the information loss of his other garbage senses. 

Seasons pass. Life cycles of the trees and grass whisked by his ears in a familiar song. When spring came Kurama felt the careful unfurling of new life, tiny pinpricks of light inching up and about, and the monsoon rain brought huge foreign swells of chakra from the east that nourished the plants.

Kurama felt himself grow and it wasn't pleasant. 

Even as he tried to fit his mind in this new, ill-fitting body, the body kept changing, and time spent trapped inside its confines passed both agonizingly slow and frighteningly fast. Kurama was a creature of constants; humans were decidedly _not_ constant. Their generations forgot easily, molded into different shapes and skins and colours every time Kurama chose to look. They grew from infant to adult to elder in the timespan of a nap. Kurama was not like that; he was not made for that. He hated he was being forced to fucking conform. 

He ate and slept, and managed rage in his moments of brief coherency. It was not a very conductive rage. Possibly it was the opposite of conductive. And thus overtime, even that all-consuming tide began to be chipped away, rinsed worn and faded with each discontinuation into black. By the time he was finally pushed onto baby food, Kurama could barely scourge up a feeling of vague disgust at the constant awareness of Kushina's spawn's presence, burning with the heat of a white sun. It was not doing him any good. Kurama had priorities. He could go on despising the spawn when he had the luxury of not being conked out because of a mental shut-down.

Being a stupid human infant was ridiculous and humiliating and _exhausting_. 

_Sage why._

* * *

 

Summer arrived with the stir of blooming things. Outside became a blanket of gold-white light. The humans too seemed to have taken this chance to miraculously multiply, although that might've been more because of Kurama's new-found ability to focus for more than five seconds at a time. 

There were a lot of them.

Uzumaki Kushina's spawn was always the closest, and beyond him were the other children, small flickering insects with their candle-light systems, separated from Kurama by crumbling plaster and solitude. Others were the ANBU guards perched in the shadowy corners of the room, a woman with tea-leaves chakra that crackled with tightly-suppressed fear whenever she edged close enough to Kurama to feed him or change his diapers. Kurama noticed her on the basis that he sensed her all the time, whether it was in physical contact or the whisper of warm water, trickling green blue through her system, or the crinkle of underfoot whenever her anxiety spiked.

His caretakers didn't seem to like him. Kurama was ambivalent in return. He counted time by the Monkey Man's visits. Like clockwork, twice a week for short, brief period Kurama would see the ugly hat and the wrinkled face and the low, tired voice. Most of the time, the man talked to the spawn, who gurgled happily and actually responded to the man's funny faces, unlike Kurama, who would scrunched up his nose and scream bloody murder instead. Seeing the bastard's expression falter was euphoric.

Summer came and went. Contact from anyone apart from the Hokage and the ANBU guards and the distant tea-leaf caretaker was rare. Sometimes, the ANBU would place the two of them onto the floor and watch in their silent, ghostly way as Kushina's spawn made loud, burbling noises and Kurama kept his brooding silence. They would flash items: cards with simple pictures stamped on top, blunt rubber weapons, the occasional toy, slowly pronouncing the matching words. It wasn't as if the orphanage workers were taking the task of educational development unto themselves.

One of these sessions, Kushina's spawn was already shuffling around the room at a fast crawl while Kurama tried and failed to mimic his movements—of course the spawn was better at this than him, of course, when the current ANBU educator pulled out a toy mirror from under his arm and waved it in front of Kurama's face.

With careful, exaggerated pronunciation, he said,  _"Mirror."_

Kurama took one glance at his reflection and made a choked off, wheezing noise.

The tiny baby staring back had huge lavender eyes and wisps of red hair. There were faint whisker marks stenciled on its chubby cheeks, and its mouth was open in an expression of horrified horror.

He looked like Uzumaki Kushina.

He looked exactly like Uzumaki Kushina would look if she were a six month old infant.

That was _not okay._

He hadn't given much thought to his physical appearance before this, hadn't given much thought about his new body at all apart from its limitations and the cage that it represented. He hadn't thought that he would look like _Uzumaki Father-damned Kushina._

The ANBU shook the mirror like a rattle. He ignored Kurama's sudden flailing, and said, same as before: "Mir-ror."

"Urrgh," said Kurama. Uncoordinated limb movements smacked the surface and bounced. His new vocal cords still weren't working properly, shitty humans, and so what should have been, "I know what it is you _fool,_ " came out as incoherent babbling instead.

The ANBU tilted his head. Hastily chopped brown hair brushed his chin, beyond the falcon mask.

" _Mirror._ Come on kiddo."

The spawn, having made his way around the room, made a lunge for it over Kurama's shoulder. "Mramrah," he cooed. The ANBU lifted it so that it was just out of reach, a wise choice, considering that most of the things the spawn got his hands on ended up slobbered with drool. This, unfortunately, included Kurama's clothes.

"Yes, Mirror," the ANBU said, sounding pleased. He tucked the mirror away so that both hands were free, and pointed at the spawn. _"Naruto."_

"Bwarwuwu," the spawn countered.

He pointed at Kurama next. _"Menma_ ,"came the careful enunciation, and Kurama bared his teeth and hissed.

Memna.

That was what the humans called him.

He hadn't been paying particularly close attention when the spawn's progenitors were deciding baby names, but Kushina's thoughts were loud and it wasn't as if Kurama had anything better to do. So he had listened, if absentmindedly while going through escape plots. Kushina and her blasted Hokage had come to the following decisions. "Naruto,"  if it were a boy. "Menma," if it were a girl. Their naming sense was truly terrible—both were ramen condiments, _why_ —and somehow, by sheer stroke of luck or maybe just appearance, Kushina's spawn had gotten the name he had been designated and Kurama, who shouldn't actually be here, received the extra.

A _ramen_ condiment. As if this entire situation wasn't infuriating enough.

The ANBU pointed again. "Menma."

Kurama lunged forward and made an effort to bite his finger off.

 

* * *

 

The Events of October Tenth still remained a mystery, but by the time Kurama learned to crawl he had a formulated conjecture on what he _shouldn't_ do. The main cornerstone of sealing a Tailed-Beast was that they would die if their host did. It was how the villages had wrangled, albeit with much difficulty, a reason for the Kurama and his siblings  to give their chakra. They could revive, sure, but that was an unpleasant process, especially so for Kurama, who had the largest amount of raw power of the nine. It could mean decades spent floating in limbo.

The other problem was that the Namikaze bastard had _split him in half._

He did not know the repercussions of being split in half. That was not an event that had happened before. It was not an event he wanted to happen, ever. But it had, and now Kurama was trying to think his way through it.

The first point being: Kurama had no idea if he was stable or not outside a seal. Part of him was purely Yin-chakra and part of him was purely Yang. He seemed to have been doing fine, if smaller, after the split, but he had also been so blinded with rage that he wouldn't have noticed had parts of him dissipated into thin smoke.

And besides, that didn't count. He'd barely two minutes of being split before Uzumaki Kushina had caged him again.

The second point was that Kurama really, really did not want to die. There were ways out, but they were on based on a foundation of guesswork and all of them had a high percentage of him returning back to the ground. He wasn't sure what would happen if only one part of him did that. Would he be able to re-amass as a half, or would he have to wait until all of his chakra went back into the cycle?

It was not something Kurama wanted to find out.

At all.

Which, unfortunately, placed a rather large roadblock in his plans. 

The simplest route would be to unleash his chakra (there was a mechanism keeping it locked, and he was fairly certain he could finagle his way through with enough time) kill Kushina's spawn, and burn the village. The other was to kill Kushina's dratted spawn and then himself, thus making it so that all of his chakra returned back to Earth's giant energy sink. The first had the problem of "if I die when I'm split in half..." and the threat of being sealed once again by the Monkey-Man. The second had the problem of being stuck for a century of non-existence.

He couldn't be in the village, period. There was too great of a chance of something going wrong, of someone taking note and sealing him again. He didn't want to die, so he had to find a way to break both his and the spawn's seal. He needed time to merge, recuperate, and then destroy this village from a safe distance.

He needed patience.

It was going to be tedious and infuriating and Kurama needed to gain a certain amount of trust to make it work, but it sure beat the other possibilities. Humans had short lives. It would take a decade, maybe two before he could carry it out, and preferably before the spawn grew old enough to understand just what he was harboring. Kurama needed to find a way to break past the seals, find a way to get some distance between himself and the village, and find a way to sneak two tightly guarded "jinchuuriki" outside Konoha's walls before Kushina's spawn grew competent enough to pose a wrench.

It was going to take a decade, maybe two. Kurama was going to have to pretend and play civilized and make sure that the brat survives to take part in it, but it still beat the nothingness that came with the other option.

A decade, maybe two. Kurama had waited nearly a hundred years for his freedom.

He could wait a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there's anything you liked so far, tell me on your way out! Reviews are very encouraged.


	3. Firsts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Kakashi, amongst other things.

But first: the Dog-brat.

He came in the eye of summer, lingering outside, a murky shadow and a silent breeze. His presence stank. Heavy and swollen, it stank, in grief and self-loathing, cut with the edges of exhaustion, all wrapped in a crackle of static and ozone-char. The first time Kurama had felt his chakra like a burn on his too-new skin, the wave of sheer, acidic hate he had managed was enough to choke on. So familiar, Dog-brat was. Too familiar.

He was also incredibly, infuriatingly, Father-damned _close._

Dog-brat hovered. He did it very frequently but he never showed himself like the Monkey-man did, and thus Kurama could not even take the feeble pleasure of screeching in his face like an unholy banshee and watch him jerk. He was in the ceiling and at the corners and sometimes hidden in the tree next to the room’s tiny, only window, but he kept his mandatory distance of five meters. That was five meters out range of Kurama’s ability to rupture his eardrums.

Kurama’s new lungs, while stupid and garbage at a lot of things, were very excellent for screaming. 

That was, let him be clear, the _only_ thing they were good for.

But he couldn’t scream at nothing. There was no benefit in that. He’d tried in the first two weeks crammed inside this stupid shell and all he’d gotten for it was a hoarse throat and a headache and a quick, merciless descent into sleep. It was impractical, Kurama admitted grudgingly. Also, the noise woke up Kushina’s spawn. Then _he_ started crying, ugly and splotchy and right next to Kurama’s ear, and Kurama could admit being that on the receiving end of tiny infant wailing was truly, truly, unpleasant.

Although the spawn was just generally unpleasant. For all the trust that Kurama needed, there was a very large, very aggravated portion of his brain that wanted to throttle the little blond shit on sight, which, considering they were stuck in a shared crib, was _all_ the time. It wasn’t even necessarily easy to try to like him. He clung to Kurama like a very persistent leech, yanking Kurama’s hair, drooling over his lap, and Kurama did not, in fact, have the energy to push him off after twenty-seven consecutive turns of getting treated like a coat rack with the spawn refusing to _budge_. 

Sometimes Kurama dreamed about tearing the spawn's throat out. He didn’t have the motor skills to act on that, but, well, he dreamed.

He followed the spawn’s lead when it came to firsts. He didn’t like it, but he also had no idea what the development milestones for stupid human infants were and he wasn’t so far gone as to resort to the suicide route. _He wasn’t_. It was just a seriously contemplated course of action that became more appealing every day, usually when there was formula all over the front of Kurama’s shirt and face.

He still wasn’t going to actually act on it.

Thus, everything had to be carefully timed.

Kurama paid special attention to the babbling baby-talk the spawn made and parroted it accordingly when he wasn’t screeching. He kept down most of his sloppy, disgusting baby food. A short two days after the spawn managed to scoot himself from one end of the room to the other, Kurama crawled for the first time.

Crawling was horrible and impossible and Kurama hated it with a vengeance.

Kurama’s limbs were the wrong length. They were the wrong build, and they either didn’t want to move in the right ways or they didn’t want to move at all, period. Two measly meters of floor space should in no way be such an exercise in frustration.

But it was. Oh, it was.

The spawn did not have this problem.

The spawn was a literal ball of hyperactive energy. He bounced more than he crawled and took to exploring their very desolate, very boring room like it was his personal mission. His _other_ personal mission seemed to be debilitating Kurama’s progress, mainly in the form of latching onto Kurama’s waist and gnawing furiously on a sleeve, or a shoulder, or—something. Anything. Kurama’s ridiculous, Kushina-red hair included.

He seemed oddly delighted whenever in the process of this action. Whenever Kurama smacked him away with too small, too clumsy child hands, he would just resume, and with greater efforts. Evidently, his thrice-damned progenitors had passed a lot down despite barely being present for five minutes after his birth.

“Ugh,” Kurama garbled. The spawn heaved himself over his shoulder and proceeded to bat at Kurama’s hair and make disgusting giggly noises.

 _“Ugh,”_ Kurama hissed, into the wooden floor, because the spawn was basically on top of him and he was heavy, _why was he so heavy._ Kurama was basically flattened under his too-stubby limbs and too-encasing bear hug.

That was how most of Kurama’s crawling attempts went. The spawn did not, by any means, possess the mental acuity to leave Kurama alone for five measly minutes.

All in all, it took Kurama two weeks to drag, heave, and internally curse himself from one end of the blasted room to the other without conking out halfway. And with absolutely no thanks to Kushina's thrice-damned menace of an offspring. When the milestone was finally—finally! —accomplished, the Dog-brat dropped by.

Not a flicker of a shadow or a too-close signature, but actually dropped by. In plain sight. There was a mask over his face, yes, but between the floofy hair and static chakra, it was, undeniably, Dog-brat.

Kurama had a lot of feeling for Dog-brat. None of them were charitable feelings.

 So, very reasonably, he took the opportunity to scream and scrape the highest, shrillest, decibel level he could manage with _his tiny stupid lungs._

Dog-brat didn’t flinch outright but Kurama could feel the blip in his chakra, brief and shocked like a mental step backwards. He relished it with glee, and continued on, until his head began to ring little and his throat got cogged up. Then he closed his mouth and scowled imperiously. He blinked hard and very resolutely did not rub at his temple in weakness.

Dog-bat… looked at him.

Kurama scowled harder.

The spawn, the fool, scooted forward, amazed with this new, novel addition to their room, and proceeded to make an effort to chew Dog-brat’s ankle.

The spawn loved the Dog-brat.

Just to be contrary to Kurama’s everything, the spawn loved the Dog-brat. Possibly this was because the first thing Dog-brat ever did in the spawn’s presence was take a brightly patterned rattle from his back pocket and feed it to his ungainly child hands, but the spawn, it bore repeating, _loved the Dog-brat._

He didn’t bother Kurama when Dog-brat was present, which was technically a blessing. Instead, his usual energy was directed into frantically waving his stubby arms in a “pick me up!” gesture.

And Dog-brat did.

Hesitant and wavering, with chakra like uneven quicksand, Dog-brat did.  He lifted the spawn up slowly and careufully and tucked him into the crook of his neck, a mechanical stiffness to his actions that said he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. Not that that mattered to the spawn. Not that the spawn was old enough, or had enough human contact to tell. The spawn was held and thus the spawn was happy.

No one picked the spawn up. The Monkey-man, but only briefly. The ANBU did, but only for the curtesy two seconds it took to move him from the crib to the floor. Kurama, but Kurama didn’t count. Kurama did not have a choice in the matter. Whether he refused or not, the stupid spawn would still latch on like a demented octopus.

Dog-brat picked him up and let the spawn stay and the spawn beamed a gummy smile at him. “Guaguguah! Ah!” he babbled, which in baby-talk was the equivalent of a victorious fist bump. Dog-brat glanced down, alarmed.

Kurama watched the entire procession dourly from the ground.

And just like that, Dog-brat was hoisted onto the top of the spawn’s list of favourites. Kurama felt the unfurling of the spawn’s chakra, a fizzling, sparking shower of contentment, one that Kurma usually associated with the spawn’s stuffed rabbit or the Monkey-man. It made sense. The spawn was ecstatic warmth and contact. Dog-brat gave him that. He held the spawn close and rocked him, carefully, awkwardly, and it was something no one had ever done before.

It was also something no one had ever done with Kurama, which was just as well, because Kurama would have tried to gouge their eyes out.

However, while the spawn’s chakra was so brilliantly happy it was beginning to fringe on a headache, Dog-brat’s was a veritable sludge of… something.

Many things. Turmoil. Grief. Guilt.

Kurama squinted. Ugh. It wasn't pitiful, because Kurama had no pity to give to the wretched humans but it was... well pitiful was kind of the only word for it. Pathetic, maybe?

Dog-brat tried to pick Kurama up, afterwards, and Kurama instantly felt whatever pathetic pity he had shrivel up and retract into a haze of outrage.  He bared his teeth and _yowled_ in Dog-brat’s face, and Dog-brat, because he was not in fact an idiot like Kushina’s spawn, withdrew his fingers before they could be chewed off.

 

* * *

 

 

The first visit felt like poking a hole into a damn. Afterwards, Dog-brat dropped by with alarming frequency. He never stayed long, only five to ten minutes at a time, but he left little toys in their shared crib: soft chewy pacifiers that cooled Kurama’s mouth when teething began, a stuffed rabbit the spawn monopolized on first contact, cozy blankets that smelled of strawberry soap. Sometimes he brought books too, hard covered ones with simple sentences and big pictures that Kurama used to smack the spawn over the head with if he was being particularly irritating.

Bribery worked with the spawn: every single time Dog-brat visited, with new toys and clothes and awkward-spawn holding, the spawn seemed to like him a little more.

Bribery did not work with Kurama.

At least, not until chocolate happened.

The first time, it was a carton was full of thin coated wafers, nutty and delicious and a completely foreign assault on Kurama’s senses. Kurama finished the entire box in a day. The next was huge big balls of creamy white chocolate wrapped in gold foil. And Kurama finished _that_ in a day as well. Dog-brat came, and he brought things like gummies and candied fruit and sweet juice, all of which specifically targeted Kurama, because the spawn was always more interested in Dog-brat than the food.

It was demeaning.

But it was delicious. Oh, it was delicious. Taste had not been a sensation Kurama had known prior; the sweet plumpness of an orange between his teeth, rock candies melting on his tongue, warm chocolate, crisp fruit crunching. Tailed-beasts did have taste buds. Tailed Beasts did not _eat_. It was all different. But it was also for once a good different, and Kurama’s new tiny shell seemed to love sugar with a terrifyingly boundless abandon.

So every visit henceforth, Kurama glowered at the Dog-brat sullenly, and the Dog-brat obligingly snuck him another stick of dango. It was kind of like training the twerp to be an automatic candy dispenser, except Kurama was aware enough to know that the twerp was trying to train _him_ as well. Kurama had stopped screeching at incoherent levels every time the Dog-brat arrived, but wasn’t like Dog-brat reacted anymore anyways. And oh fine, yes, it was also because he wouldn’t get any sweets.

At this point sweets were Kurama’s only balm to this ridiculous situation. They made up for maybe five percent of all his suffering. Sneaking a candied ginger piece into his mouth, Kurama mentally raised the number up to seven percent.

He still had enough pride and vehemence to snap at Dog-brat’s fingers any time he got too close though, so at least there was that.

 When the time came, the spawn’s first words were not “Menma,” or “rattle” or even  “Jiji” despite the Monkey-man’s periodic visits and his subsequent attempts at persuading the spawn to form something understandable. Completely unsurprisingly to Kurama, that honor was reserved for Dog-brat. It was spat in his face late one sunlight, dusty afternoon, half garbled and barely edging into the realm of coherency.

Dog-brat really did not speak much. However, on occasions when he stayed for longer than his customary ten minutes, he took over for the ANBU educators, pointing out different objects and unsuccessfully trying to get both Kurama and the spawn to repeat them.

His mask, white and black and red-striped, was one of those objects.

“I-nu,” Kushina’s spawn cooed, sounding very pleased with himself. “Inu Inu!”

Dog-brat froze.

“Inu Inu!” he spawn burbled gleefully, and fisted his tiny hands into Dog-brat’s hair.

Rolling over his blanket pile, Kurama sighed as Dog-brat’s chakra flared high in surprise. It trembled, trembled, uncertain.  And then there was that murky ocean of feelings bobbing up up _up_ …

Dog-brat unceremoniously dropped the spawn back beside Kurama, patted his head in an absent sort of way, and disappeared.

The spawn blinked. His face puckered in confusion. “I-nu?” he warbled. He yanked on the back of Kurama’s shirt.

Which meant spawn-duty was once again regulated to Kurama. Honestly. These days the only time he had in peace and silence were when Dog-brat came around. The Dog-brat that had just left. Fleeing from the spawn, or whatever the spawn represented to him. After the first visit in nearly a week.

And Kurama had thought the twerp had managed to sort through whatever stupid human feelings were plaguing him. Obviously not.

“INU!” said the spawn again, distressed.

Another yank, this time on his hair.  Kurama scourged around the blankets until he came up with the spawn's favourite rattle and then chucked it at his head.

 

* * *

 

 

Two days after the spawn had managed to cause Dog-brat to flee pathetically, Kurama gurgled out a begrudging " _No up!"_ in the Monkey-man's tired, craggy and then delighted face. Those were not his actual first words, of course. Kurama had managed that as soon as he got the correct teeth grown in and gotten his tongue to wrangle consonants into submission, months ago.  "You wretched _brat_ _!"_  was hissed somewhere at two in the morning. It was, of course, reserved for the spawn, fueled by a moment of loathing so great that each syllable came out crisply precise. Kurama had woken up in the dead of the night to the shithead gumming savagely on his arm.

Like a lot of things, pain was not a thing Kurama had ever felt before. It was terrible. Kurama whacked the spawn over the head. The spawn, of course, gnawed harder.

There was slobber over his clothes. Again.

 

* * *

 

 

Fall came round again in the shift of crunching leaves underfoot. Chakra dimmed, the grasses wilting, the trees barreling away chakra into the rings of their heartwood. It took Dog-brat three weeks to get over his crisis, and by the time he returned, summer was nothing but a faint memory on the wind.

Kurama would never admit it, but he was very, incredibly thankful that Dog-brat was back. For one, he was Kurama's automatic sweet dispenser. For another, the spawn _sulked_. He spent the first few days confused and sullen and, then, after Dog-brat hadn’t reappeared for a week, grafted himself to Kurama like an unwanted extra limb, as if he thought Kurama would just up and disappear as well. Kurama would have loved to. He just, couldn’t, you know, _walk_.

By the time Dog-brat reappeared, Kurama had tried to smother the spawn with a pillow twice over, fuelled by exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and outrage.

That was not in any way conductive to his plans.

Dog-brat slipped through the window as always, hair ridiculous, mask in place, chakra strung-tight. It was early morning, and the sun was barely a pale strip on the horizon. He landed cat-footed on the floor of the room. He smelled of things—oil and metal and something rusty like unwashed blood—and he had a huge dark bowl of something tucked under one arm, steaming gently. Kurama glowered, shoving his fringe of red hair away from his eyes. The spawn, as soon as Dog-brat’s presence registered, began immediately trying to climb over the crib walls.

Hauling himself up, he flailed a little on the top edge of the crib, arms pin-wheeling.

“Inu Inu!” he squawked.

Before he could topple and smack his head on the ground, Dog-brat moved. He set down the bowl of… Ramen? Ramen. Kurama squinted, dredged up references, and yes, that was ramen. Catching the collar of the spawn’s shirt, he and lifted him up gently, letting the spawn flail his hands into the ANBU mask with small thwacking noises. As always, his chakra was a pale dark shell, banked to coals and tightly restrained and tired, even as the spawn lit up obnoxiously in his arms.

He patted the spawn’s back. Then he tried to set him down to no avail. The spawn had cinched his stubby limbs around Dog-brat’s arm like a garrote.

He… looked at the spawn.

He looked at Kurama, and his chakra had a helpless “ _what do I do_ ” ring to it.

Kurama had been on the receiving end of that fucking garrotte for the past two weeks. He had zero sympathy.

Eventually, Dog-brat just swung the spawn onto his shoulders and let him chew on his hair. He bent low over the crib. A plastic package dangled from his fingers with a crinkle, and Kurama snatched it up, stuffed it under a pillow, and, per their unspoken treaty, allowed Dog-brat to pick him up for just enough time to set Kurama on the floor.

Kurama crawled over to the ramen, sniffed it, and made a face.

It smelled… heavy. Oily. Strange. Kurama slapped on a scowl and eased backwards into a sit. He wasn’t touching that.

The next ten minutes were an exercise as Dog-brat tried to feed the spawn the ramen. He had to pry the spawn off from his neck first, and that was met with a lot of vocal disapproval and a screeching tantrum. Then, when the spawn was finally on the ground (with one hand fisted in the fabric of Dog-brat’s pants) he had to get the noodles and broth down the spawn’s throat.

About maybe one in five spoonfuls of food actually did that.

The rest ended up in the spawn’s shirt, in the spawn’s hair, and on Dog-brat’s mask and gloved fingers.

Dog-brat glanced at the ramen bowl, then at the spawn. Kurama could hear his sigh through the mask.

“Well,” he said, at a low mutter. “I tried, Kushina-san.” Very carefully, he placed another spoonful of noodles into the spawn’s mouth, and it was one that was miraculously swallowed.

“Yum Yum!” said the spawn.

Dog-brat glanced at Kurama, who made a face that was ninety percent bared teeth and ten percent recalcitrant little shit back at him. _No one_ tried to feed Kurama anything anymore, not since he learned how hands worked.

“Yes, I got it. I didn’t think so anyways,” said Dog-brat, and resumed his feeding of the spawn. He sounded more wry than offended. “Mah, you’re turning out more like your parents every day.”

Kurama stared at him.

What did that even _mean._ Kurama had no intention of being anything like Uzumaki Kushina or the Namikaze brat. He wasn’t even the same species. That was just—no.

He bared his teeth harder.

In response, Dog-brat made a small, quiet noise, like a choked-off laugh. “Every single day.”

He put down the spoon. He reached quick fingers behind his back and came up with a white box, clean and crisp edged, with a tangerine bow tied at the center. Unfolded, the flaps laid flat on the floor. The contents were: two little cakes, iced in white and chocolate, with a perfect strawberry on each. One of them was pushed in Kurama’s direction for it to be snatched up immediately, and Dog-brat plucked the strawberry off the other to be deposited in the spawn’s hands.

Kurama eyed him.

Chakra bubbled underneath the surface of Dog-brat’s skin, static and ozone-char, and it was tired and grieving and exhausted as it always was. And nothing that Kurama wanted to concern himself with. He turned his attention to the cake. Sweets were possibly the ultimate achievement in human history, and Kurama ate slowly and precisely to savour it. He polished off the strawberry in tiny bites. He kept one eye out as Dog-brat allowed the spawn to nip at his fingers, made funny shapes with his hands that the spawn tried to smack. For a long time, Dog-brat was silent, no more words, just playing around.

Kurama ate. The spawn also ate, for a definition of “eating.”

The room was very quiet apart from the spawn’s half-mangled idea of vocabulary.

When Dog-brat spoke again, it was an abrupt thing. The spawn had just smashed half his cake into his mouth, smearing icing all over his cheek and chin, and Dog-brat was attempting to clean it off with a handkerchief. He paused halfway, fingers stilling, green cloth against the spawn’s chin. His voice was small and serious and quiet. The words themselves: stilted, like they had been rehearsed.

A pale hand ruffled the spawn’s hair. It hesitated for a bare moment before darting out and ruffling Kurama’s. Kurama jerked away from it, of course, shaking the spill of red hair away from his face. He glowered with teeth full of frosting.

“Happy birthday,” said Dog-brat.

 

* * *

 

 

 What was in a year? Everything and nothing. What it meant: the passage of time. Rotations of the planet around the sun. The waning and growing cycles of the moon, the waning and growing cycles of chakra as it threaded its way through the world. It had meant nothing to Kurama when he was bigger than the mountains, all force and raw energy and chakra incarnate, and it meant everything now, when he was small, red-haired and violet eyed, the key to his freedom on a countdown timer.

A year. A whole year, spent in this humiliating, ridiculous, impossible shell. A _whole year._

And what was in a birthday, anyways? Everything and nothing, as well. Kurama did not celebrate birthdays, not for a very long time. They were inane and meaningless, with how long Kurama had been alive. But he remembered: back before, when the Old man Sage had still been alive, when Kurama was still small and held close and beloved, before he and his siblings had been given Father’s blessing and released into the world. Before Father had died for it.

The tailed-beasts did not have birthdays, really. They were born of their grandmother’s monstrous husk, torn apart pieces of the ten-tail’s power that coalesced enough to form sentience of their own. Kurama was the youngest of them, the one who took the most time before his chakra portion grew stable enough to _think_. All their births occurred within Father’s mindscape though. And there, time was hard to measure. An hour outside could be years and years in the idyllic place that hosted Kurama’s childhood.

But Father had believed in birthdays. He had believed in celebration. He believed in comings of age, in milestones of measurement. So even if there had no real set date, and even when the stretches inbetween occasionally got wonky, Kurama and his siblings celebrated. “When you were first born there was no sun,” Hagoromo had told them. It was a reference, to when he and his brother had tossed the Ten-Tail’s carcass into the sky and for the first time there had been a moon, pale and shining and ghastly in its beauty, and how that moon had blocked out the sun. “Yes, we should celebrate then.”

So they did.

Every time when the solar eclipse turned the outside world black and dark, Father would herd Kurama and all his siblings together. He would change the landscape of his mind with a sweep of his staff: black night, glittering stars, a huge crackling bonfire that highlighted Father’s hair yellow-orange. He would make them recite their vows. (And child-Kurama internally rolled his eyes because of course they were going to what Father was asking them to, it was _common sense)._

Their voices trembled the air in tandem.

_“And all shall be equal, in dignity, worth, respect. For all sins can be forgiven if only they seek it. For I shall raise the earth and breathe purity into the water, breathe life into the desolate. For I will keep peace, for I will be kind, for I will be tolerant. For I shall not harm until harm comes to me. For, in the name of this new age and cycle, I will follow these rules always and teach others to know and preach their value. For I will do my best.”_

Afterwards, Father would kiss their temples and give them gifts, blessings, nothing material of course, but knowledge worth their weight in love and gold. They would play games by the glow of firelight. Shiratori was a staple, for which Matatabi and Father were the reigning champions. Shukaku and Isobu, two of the eldest, kept to their quiet, amused corners. Kurama and Son-Goku made a competition of catching Chomei every time, tussling and bumping and leap-frogging over one another to see who could snag a wing. Chomei tolerated all of it with astonishing patience and only a brief smack to their noses.

Kurama had not celebrated a birthday for centuries and centuries, but he remembered. They were: black skies, firelight, laughter and Father’s crinkling smile. All the vows Kurama had long since broken. His siblings, without the rift dividing them. Joy, simple and overwhelming and exquisite.

They were not a single bare room and a tiny cake and a human brat with something broken so deep it could not be fixed, not with a human infant who held the key to Kurama’s freedom strung like a chain around his neck.

October tenth: Kurama stayed up to watch the moon rise, a silvery slice in the sky. He could feel the tension in his chest, a hard knot. Too much time passed. Too little time left. Too much and too little.

That night, he dreamed of firelight and the blue luminescence of Matatabi’s fur. He dreamed of Chomei, flying so high that neither Kurama nor Son could reach him. “Patience, little brother,” said Isobu, quiet and amused. The thousands of prayers Kurama had recited over the years: “And  _I shall treat all to be equal.”_ A red moon. No moon. “Long, long ago,” Father said, “Your grandmother committed a taboo.”

Father’s presence tasted of sun, starlight, honey. Kurama felt it blanket over him and dreamed of lost years, of being young and small and beloved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Kurama is the grumpiest baby alive. He’s also the most Uzumaki, but _shh, _don’t tell him that.__  
>  2) Kakashi is trying. He’s not great but he’s trying.  
> 3) Kurama was raised on a pacifist mentality. It unfortunately did not weather the presence of ninjas.  
> 4) If there’s something you liked, leave a review! Otherwise have an awesome day guys!


	4. Trials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toddler-hood is finally here. Kurama reads, walks, and goes outside.

In the winter, Konoha got cold.

It was a fact. Winters were cold. That was why they were _winters_ in the first place. Winters were cold in the same way that the sun burned, and the night was dark, and water was wet. Cold; the absence of heat and energy. The deceleration of molecules. Hagoromo had explained all of this when Kurama was still a stubby-legged, fat-tailed kit, and now Kurama was learning, for the first time, exactly what cold meant when one could actually feel temperature.

His teeth chattered. His fingers, already slow and stupid and clumsy, had all the coordination of a flailing whale.

There was frost dusted in the corners of the room's sole window. Outside, the trees were bare and desolate. Talk of gas and heating bills and a virus went around, snatches of conversation that filtered from beyond the walls of the room that Kurama didn't really understand. He hoped it was something to raise this blasted debilitating temperature. There were tiny humans in this building after all, and cold was generally not good for functioning organ systems.

Specifically: his organ systems. Which were malfunctioning. Terribly. Because of the cold. Or maybe it wasn't the temperature at all but just his new fool shell experiencing some kind of new breakdown, which was always a very present option.

Kurama could not recall Kushina ever having these kind of malfunctions. He couldn't recall Mito either, although most of his time with Mito was spent drowned into unconsciousness.

Most tellingly, though, _Kushina’s spawn_ was not having these malfunctions.

The spawn stumbled around on wobbly legs a lot, and he toddled into the crib a lot, and he fell on his face a lot. Unlike Kurama, he did not shiver the moment he left the safety of the blankets.

Kurama had to bury himself underneath two sweaters, a knit hat, a scarf that was more like a blanket, and five actual blankets before he was comfortable. By the end of it, he was nothing but a lump underneath a mountain of mismatched flower print fabric. Everything was flower-print. This was because Dog-brat was their main supplier, and Dog-brat had shit taste.

It was humiliating, and a father-damned wrench in the plan. 

His plans said that Kurama should have tried his hand at toddling by now, following the spawn, but sensibility something else entirely, which was for Kurama not go around trying to coordinate a hundred different body parts while swaddled in twenty layers. That was an exercise that would take more energy than Kurama had, and Kurama did not have a lot of energy in the first place. Efficiency was key.

So instead, he read.

Dog-brat had, over time, dumped a lot of books into Kurama's hands. First had come what Kurama inferred to be for actual children: colourful, big words, lots of pictures. Over time, though, it had escalated into an increasingly diverse collection, from poetry anthologies to what looked like a history textbook to a very damning title called "Tale of the Gutsy Ninja." Kurama did not know a lot about children, but he'd been sealed into Kushina early enough to know their reading levels weren't so progressive until they got out of their larval stages. Mainly part Kurama just used the books to smack the spawn over the head.

Sometime he eyed the titles and contemplated perhaps this was a test. But.... probably not. Dog-brat felt a lot of apprehension and a lot of bewilderment but never of suspicion. Dog-brat, probably and vastly more likely, just had no idea what in hell he was doing.

Then winter came. Books were still regulated as (not very useful) deterrents against the spawn, but Kurama finally found it in himself to crack them open. From boredom, if nothing else.

He needed to brush up his reading skills anyways--Kurama was far from illiterate, but the last time he had read anything in person, not just memory echoes seen from another's eyes, was over four hundred years ago. The writing system had changed from then, and it kept on changing. Nuisances in grammar and prose. Kanji that had taken a completely different life of its own. Slight alterations to the Hiragana system. They were small changes, but slapped altogether they made his reading comprehension levels plummet, and it was a nuisance as much as it was another source of rage.

Kurama's Father had spent good time teaching Kurama to read properly. Couldn't the humans just be less stupid and _stop changing things that were working fine?_

Sometimes, the spawn read with him.

Well, Kurama read, and the spawn made happy sounds and hooked his chin over Kurama's shoulder. His favourite was the picture book with the purple cat and the white dog. He would crow, "Inu-Inu!" whenever the dog showed up, which was every single page, and Kurama would sigh, "yes, now _shut up,_ " without much hope.

The good part was, after ten minutes of terrible, terrible recitation, Kurama could chuck the book halfway to the other end of the room and the spawn would go after it like an orange-wrapped baby canary kicked out of its nest. So: tripping and swaying with a lot more energy than grace. Then he would go on to be intensely fascinated by the purple cat and white dog for the next little while before boredom inevitably set on, but that still left Kurama a good chunk of peace time and more importantly _distance_ between himself and the spawn.

If he got lucky, some days the spawn didn't manage to toddle the entire way back to the crib and just went for a mid-afternoon nap on the floor.

Kurama read. He needed the foundation. He was alright with seals, but most of it was absorbed through osmosis from Uzumaki Kushina, since they were never a subject he had been interested in when he was younger and Father was alive. Seals were Shukaku's expertise. Ironic, considering last Kurama had heard of his eldest brother, Shukaku was drunk and mad (with the drunk having a direct correlation on the mad) and and it was at least three fourths because of how absolutely shitty Sand's seal masters were.

Then again, all seals masters were shitty, by the principle of the thing. The moment Kurama got out, he was going to bomb any in existence to make sure something like this _never happened ever fucking again._

 

* * *

 

 

Kurama would allow the spawn one privilege

They slept side by side. They always had. In the earliest months it was because Kurama could not move, and now it was a result of the crib being too small, weighed down by layers of comforters and pillows, books and rattle toys and blunted rubber kunai. "Kurama," Kurama said, making a face at the way his voice sounded, childish and song-bird high, but he barreled on. This was important. "My name is _Kurama._ "

Once upon a time, Kurama was named after a temple.

A mountain too, yes, but mainly a temple.

Two thousand years ago, it was where Hagoromo and his fellow priests had studied the makings of the natural world. White marble walls, spiraling turrets, a grand open chapel that lead up to a skylight combed in stained glass. It was fitted between the mountaintop and the clouds, so high up the air thinned. "My great-grandfather," Father had said, letting Kurama view the sunset glazing over the coniferous forest down below, "came to this land with his brothers and built this in honor of their mother." It had been Hagoromo's inheritance, as much as Kaguya's palace had been his brother Hamura's. And it was from here that Kurama's name came.

Two thousand years ago Kurama was born the last in a string of eleven children, born with half the strength of a God. Two thousand years ago history had still been it's early hours, with civilization barely out of its infancy after the catastrophe that was Kaguya's totalitarian reign. 

Kurama was named after Mount Kurama, the temple Kurama, and all that they represented. The peace. The stability. The wisdom. Kurama was born of love and Father had hoped that he would guide with it, that he would exist to help men as they scrabbled through the treacherous cracks of discovery, into the shining future Hagoromo had envisioned.

It hadn't quite worked out like that. Two thousand years later Kurama was all anger and resentment and bitter, ugly rage. Ashura and Indra had tried to kill one another, dragging half the world in with them, and their lineal descendants had decided upon murder, assault and theft to be to be their primary career of choice. Still though, Kurama may have broken his vows but he remembered his name. It was a gift, warm and precious and golden, held close to his heart for centuries. Father's gift. Father's blessing.

And the humans had chosen to name him Menma. After a fucking _ramen-topping_.

He was going to have to put up a lot of indignities over the next decade or so, but Kurama was not, in any way, going to put up with _Menma_.

"Repeat. _Kurama_."

"Ra ra?"

The spawn blinked blue eyes at him. In the watery moonlight they were silver. Kurama was facing him this once, instead of the chipped bars of the crib. They were close enough for Kurama to feel the puff of breath from the spawn's words like a tingle on his skin.

"Yes. _Ku-ra-ma."_

Kurama was going to have to kill this brat one day. This human boy who was Kurama's jailer and Kurama's headache, who had Namikaze's key on his navel. Kurama resented him fiercely. The boy didn't even know what those  meant. It was ironic, then, that he was also Kurama's freedom. Kurama had not graced anyone--no man or beast or bird--with his name for nearly a thousand years years, but for freedom and vengeance due, he would allow Uzumaki Naruto this one privilege.

Besides, the spawn was inevitably going to start talking more than "Inu-inu" and "yum-yum" and "Ram-ram!" If Kurama had to hear "Menma-Menma!' every two minutes from the brat's stupid mouth, his patience was going to take a very downwards plunge.

 

* * *

 

 

Spring arrived, all muddy earth, fresh rain, and Kurama learned to walk.

He shed his winter layers like a thrashing caterpillar, which was to say with very little coordination and a lot of wiggling. The blankets were regulated to one corner of the room. The toys and books were stacked into piles on the floor. Kurama, for the first time in seventeen months, spent more time outside the fading, blue painted crib than he did inside it.

He also spent more time falling flat on his face than he knew possible.

Walking meant being bipedal, all the time, and Kurama did not have tails anymore. Balance was something he had to re-learn. 

Kurama fell, and he stumbled, and he tumbled onto his rear and his knees and more often than not his nose. In a downgrading turn, it was him that was semi-permanently stuck to the spawn this time, at least in the early stages. He needed the counterweight. He dug his nails into the spawn's arm, or shoulder, or the collar of the spawn's shirt. He still ended up wobbling and then tripping once every ten seconds.

It was all wrong, this body. The legs and the structure, the tiny, fragile casing of it. Too small. All the different shapes and lengths.  _Wrong wrong wrong._  Kurama was used to towering above the great forests and slanted roofs of the villages he came across, not to be dwarfed by and inside them. He was too soft like this: a chickadee's bones underneath skin and tendon. Humans were soft all over. Their lifespans so short, just wisps of ash to the wind, their bodies vulnerable. One twist of Kurama's anger had been enough to leave the best of them gasping for breath as his chakra wrapped them in a malicious haze, sinking beneath their skin, poisoning that fragile  _spark_  from their systems.

Kurama took two steps, felt his center of balance shift abruptly, and then smacked into the floor with a resounding _"Urrgh."_

"Rama?" said the spawn.

Kurama rolled onto his back and squinted at the ceiling. Also, the spawn’s face. "Go away."

"Up up?"

"No."

The spawn flopped down next to him with a slight "oomph!," a displacement of air, and then slung one very unwanted arm over Kurama's belly. "Nap!" he declared.

Kurama batted his hand away, but the spawn was not wrong. It was, unfortunately, nap time.

 

* * *

 

 

"Inu-Inu?" the spawn warbled.

"I don't know," Kurama said absently, flipping a page. "You'll have to ask him when he comes back."

The spawn wheedled harder, plopping his arms over Kurama's shoulders. "Want Inuuuuu."

"You _always_ want the mutt."

"Nu-uh!"

Kurama rolled his eyes. Sunlight was bright in the morning, and it curled through the window to highlight the dustmotes and the reflective sheen of his book, some huge tome with glossy, two page spreads of landscapes captured by human cameras. "Or you want ramen. Yes. I know. _Big difference."_

"Rama-Rame!" the spawn agreed cheerily. His fingers smacked a picture of a desert, all rolling golden sand below a bleached sky. Kurama could feel him study it intently for oh, three seconds, before his attention span abruptly switched off and he leaned ninety percent of his body weight onto Kurama's back. "Can-ee!"

"No," said Kurama, and turned another page. Blue lakes, this time. Mountains in the backdrop. A fine silvery mist billowed through, and there were bits of white snow capping the mountain ridges.

The spawn did not really like being told "no," so of course that was always Kurama's first course of action. The weight on his back increased exponentially. 

"Can-eeeee," squealed the spawn, straight into Kurama's ear.

In spawn talk, that pretty much meant: _"I am hungry and Dog-brat is not here to amuse me and I want something sweet and something to do. Please feed me Kurama, preferably with your chocolates. Or I will use my lungs to try to scream your ears off."_  Kurama was, at this point, very excellent at extrapolating upon the spawn's one-word baby messages.

It was not a skill he was incredibly proud of, however much it was a necessary one.

 _"No,_ " said Kurama, again, with a gritted emphasis. The spawn had his own candy. The spawn was never, ever getting Kurama's candy. The spawn had also eaten all of his own candy, but that was the fool's fault for not knowing how to ration properly.

Kurama had three chocolate bars, a packet of gummies, two cupcakes, and a lollipop stashed carefully away. Because even though Dog-brat had been trained to be Kurama's automatic candy dispenser, his visits still, you know, had time lapses in between. And in those lapses, sometimes sweets became a rare commodity.

Thus: the rationing.

Dog-brat was smart enough to understand being an automatic candy dispenser gained him privileges. Training the spawn to be a pack mule (and to carry all of Kurama's things for him) proved for far less outstanding results. The spawn had all the brain cells of a concussed cantoploupe.

Which in practice was still enough to locate Kurama's primary stash of sweets, however, because the spawn gave an audible pout, a whining" _Raaaama,_ " and then he heaved himself the rest of the way over Kurama's shoulder, tumbling into Kurama's lap and over the book, and proceeded to attack Kurama's pockets for the gummy stash. Kurama yelped once, high and furious. He aimed a kicked at the shitty spawn's side. When that did nothing, he latched onto one tiny wrist and _bit down hard._

The spawn yowled. One flailing hand smacked Kurama in the face. He released, and than the spawn was back to trying to get to the gummies.

Kurama yanked the book out from underneath the spawn's considerable weight and attempted to clobber him with it.

 

* * *

 

 

Konoha's streets, from the vantage point of a tiny human toddler, were huge.

And overwhelming.

It smelt of things, felt of things. A biting dry wind prickled Kurama's skin, the sun's light stung his eyes, there was birdsong in the air mixed with a cacophony of yelling and windows being shuttered open. There was too _much_. Just. Too much sensation. Strange sensation. The Monkey-man stepped into the marketplace with the spawn toddling at his heels, and Kurama's stupid, stupid body and stupid stupid senses categorized, errored, and did a malfunction.

He froze.

And then his wobbly, still unused to walking long-distances legs decided that he needed to be on his butt, _right now._

Kurama had did a good job of not falling onto the dirt for the long duration of the walk, dammit. He'd even grudgingly used the spawn's arm as a crutch, because falling in front of all these staring-out-of-the-side-of-their-eye insects was infinitely more humiliating the alternative. The first bit of the long trudge had been managed with relative grace. Kurama side-eyed the construction being done. There were houses torn down to their wooden skeletons, wisps of lingering miasma, entire patches of the villages that had been crushed by Kurama's rage and still harbored the signs of destruction, and Kurama looked upon it and felt a quiet, viscous satisfaction.

Then they reached the market and his shell just went: _NO_.

The dratted Monkey-man noticed first. He halted, letting the spawn stumble into his leg for a bare second, and peered down at Kurama. Kurama wanted to rip his ugly hat off and shove it down his throat.

"Alright there, Menma-kun?"

A glower was his only reply. Kurama imagined pummeling something. Then he mentally told his shell to _stop whining and deal with it_  and hastily but carefully shoved himself to his feet.

He sunk his nails into the spawn's arm and jerked his head in a "let's go" gesture.

"Well, if you wish so," said the Monkey-man, bemused, and resumed at his slow, rustling walk.

They stopped at the ramen place.

Of course they stopped at the ramen place.

The spawn, because Uzumaki genetics, was completely ecstatic. He let go of the Monkey-man's robes and clambered up on a wooden stool, all buzzing excitement. Kurama scowled hard enough for his face to hurt. He did not clamber anywhere. He looked upon the greasy overhang and the very familiar scent of noodles, and the equally familiar man in the white hat and apron, and seethed.

"Ramen?" said the spawn, eyeing the man hopefully. He kicked his feet.

"Indeed," said noodle-man, smiling. "First time customers?"

"Well, they're old enough to walk now," said the Monkey-man.

He ordered for the both of them: venison ramen, and then pork ramen, with a side of dango in sticky-sweet sauce. Dog-brat had been blabbing, Kurama thought uncharitably. The food was fixed in minutes, huge steaming bowls that smelt of oil and fried meat and broth, and the spawn descended upon his noodles like Saiken on... pretty much everything. He finished quickly, a veritable vacuum, and when there was no more Kurama shoved the untouched pork in his direction.

For some reason, the noodle owner zeroed in very intensely on Kurama. Possibly because he wasn't eating the noodles. Instead, he munched crabbily on his fourth stick of dango.

"Rama no ramen," said the spawn, wrinkling his nose at the noodle-man. "All can-ee." Kurama redirected his scowl, and the spawn took the opportunity to sneak a dango stick for himself.

"Really?" demanded Kurama. He shoved the rest of the plate away, out of the spawn's freakish reach.

"Mmmhmmuhmm," said the spawn.

"It's nice to see brothers together," remarked noodle man, still smiling, and Kurama was too busy fending the spawn off from precious, precious dango to throw his skewer at him. He heaved a third bowl out from underneath the counter somewhere. It steamed gently. Somehow, the spawn had finished the pork bowl as well, though where it all went Kurama didn't know. He stopped trying to bowl Kurama over long enough to focus in on the noodles.

Then noodle man pulled out another plate of dango as well. "On the house," he told Kurama in a whisper, and Kurama's dislike for him dissipated a few notches.

By the time they were done the spawn was a catatonic ball from eating his body weight in grease and noodles, and Kurama too was trying to blink the post-food sleep-haze out of his eyes. The spawn hopped off his chair, and then newly fell over into the Monkey-man's ugly robes. Kurama just fell, period. 

"You brothers take care of each other now," the noodle-man said, looking at them fondly. And the spawn said, "Uh-huh," in a knowing sort of way, and Kurama standing there, in that dusty street corner smelling of ugly grease vapour with the too-hot sun at his back, realized the implications and wanted to stab the noodle-man in the face with a skewer all over again.

Because they weren't. They weren't _brothers_. Kurama had siblings, eight of them, all trapped behind ink-lines by that damned Senju and sold off like objects for a profit. Kurama had siblings and Kushina's spawn wasn't one of them. Kushina's spawn didn't even come close. Kurama didn't need to be taken care of by the result of two of humanity's worst mistakes - Kurama didn't want to take care of the boy who was his prison but he _needed_ Uzumaki Naruto alive.

He wanted to scream.

"No," he told the spawn instead, in front of a dusty clothing boutique. That was what Kurama said to him most. Always: _"no._ " And the spawn blinked at him uncomprehendingly, and the Monkey-man was _right there_ , and Kurama breathed down his rage and refused to say anything more.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, the spawn draped himself over Kurama's back like an extraordinarily warm, extraordinarily super-glued blanket. He still smelt of the day's ongoings: dust, and a bit of smoke, and the oily, heavy tang of the ramen broth. Sea-salt and fresh dried grass, like Uzumaki Kushina. The thrum of his chakra: summer ocean mixed with Kurama's angry, vindictive solar flare. He felt like a furnace and his hands hung around Kurama's neck in a squeezing hug, or a noose, one that only loosened when he fell asleep.

It was night, and it was dark, and the world was hushed around them. ANBU at the window, chakra-flickers beyond. The spawn, always the brightest, brightest thing, the closest thing, the most hated thing, burning with the heat of a white sun.

Arms tightened around Kurama's shoulders. Kurama shifted, pressed his forehead to the crib walls so that they dug in, watched the way the strands of his red hair looked more brown in the darkness. The spawn's sleepy sigh ghosted against his ear.

"Love you," he mumbled, into Kurama's hair. "Love you Rama."

Kurama bit down on a scream and did not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Kakashi just assumes Naruto stuck his two favourite things into the same category. So when it's ramen, it's "rama!" and when it's his brother, it's also "rama!"  
> 2\. Kurama looks a lot like Kushina. Teuchi does not forget his most frequent customer.  
> 3\. Where are these feelings coming from, _where. ___  
> 4\. If there's anything you liked, leave a comment guys! Pretty please. Do it for angry Kurama.


	5. Apartment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Process of elimination dictates Kurama has to be the responsible one.

The inside of the apartment smelled strongly of fresh paint. Kurama lingered by the doorway, halfway between the wooden flooring of the entrance and the faded carpet of the hall. He squinted down at the key in his hands. It looked disproportionately large next to his tiny, bony fingers, the metal pale, edges sharp, strung on a leather cord.

"Rama there's a _bed_!" hollered the spawn gleefully from inside. "And two rooms! And a stove thingy!"

Kurama could not believe he had walked for half an hour in the heat-stroke inducing summer weather and up five flights of stairs for this.

He toed the huge book bag deposited just at the entrance. The mystery novel he'd been reading was shoved with the spine up next to his geography photo collection. Presumably, ANBU had hauled everything up for transportation while Kurama napped the morning away under the measly courtyard shade, and the thought made Kurama scowl reflexively. Little masked bastards were always touching his stuff.

He eyed the apartment again.

It wasn't exactly the most surprising development, Kurama supposed, likely spurred by the spawn sticking purple food colouring into the orphanage shower systems last week. It just wasn't a fond development. It was on the fifth floor, for one. For another, everything had to be reorganized. The dratted Monkey-man was likely supposed to have held an introduction, but he'd gotten himself summoned by ANBU shortly after they arrived, so now it was just  the spawn and Kurama. And also Finch, who was one of the insect-clan with the annoyingly buzzing chakra, but it wasn't like Finch was doing anything.

There was a thump, a muffled crash, a sound like water fizzling out of a wonky tap. The spawn's voice came again, this time two pitches higher than previously and even louder. "And a baaaath!"

All Kurama wanted to do was sit down and sleep for a while. Why was that such an inconceivable thing to accomplish. "Okay you fool," he scowled, stepping past the bookbag. "I'm coming."

Unpleasantly, the smell of undried paint grew stronger as he entered. It was the walls. They were airy and pristinely white, in a way that didn't match up to the orphanage's streaked grey or even the dirty beige Uzumaki Kushina used to have for her apartment. Wooden pannelling creaked underneath Kurama's feet. The interior was small, but furnished, with a stove element shoved on top of a oven, a living area hosting a couch and a low table and a chunky television, and down a short hallway, three doors in various states of open. Kurama poked his head down the first one and found the spawn in the bathtub, wading shin deep in water.

"It's so warm," the spawn marvelled. He splashed his hand under the tap. His pants were rolled up to his knees, half his hair plastered wetly to his skull, the front of his shirt soaked through.

Kurama stared dubiously at the water level. "If you let it overflow—"

"Yeah yeah yeah I won't," he interrupted, before reaching up and fiddling with the dials. The showerhead spluttered, made a choked, gurgling noise, and let out a fizzling stream.

Kushina’s idiotic spawn let out a screech like a cat with its tail stepped on and Kurama got a scattering of water across his face. Reaching up blindly, he smacked the dial closed. Kurama blinked. Once, twice, furiously, to rid his eyes of the sudden watery invasion. He squinted to find the spawn grinning at him, now thoroughly waterlogged, raising  his hands to do something undoubtedly stupid.

Kurama edged out the door. "Um _, no_."

Whatever. Clean bathroom. Probably going to be _drowning_ bathroom soon enough, but clean. That was an improvement.

The other two doors, when he went to explore them, lead to little bedrooms, one slightly bigger than the other. The first had a bed set up, the largest Kurama had seen in four years, with freshly laundered sheets and throw pillows stacked at the headboard. A window combed in blue curtains sat directly above it. Scattering of boxes were piled across the floor, presumably full of Kurama and the spawn's worn, torn, and occasionally drooled upon possessions.

The bed was clean and smelled faintly of soap; it looked very enticing.  Four in the afternoon was his designated nap time, and Kurama had long since just given up when it came to sleep. It was what it was. There was nothing to done about it.

He checked the other room first though. Empty, bare floors. No dust.

Then he went to the bathroom, gave the spawn the stink eye, wrenched closed the tap because the water was actually going to slosh out of the tub, much to the spawn's betrayed whine of, "Rama!" and then stalked back out. He took the time to heave his enormous and ridiculously heavy book-bag into the living room. Then he pushed the front door shut, made sure the spawn hadn't turned the tap back on, and crawled into the beautiful new bed.

 Softness. And _warmth_. Kurama pulled the covers over his head, letting the dark soothe his migraine. Between the heat and the physical exertion and the spawn’s conversation with the Monkey-man--although mainly the heat and the exertion--the beginnings of one had set up nest in his skull with stabbing vengeance. Kurama did not enjoy headaches in the slightest, so of course headaches found him delightful to torment. It was all very terrible and completely aggravating.

The comforter was very soft. Kurama curled himself around a pillow and went to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing about the apartment was, once he'd managed to temporarily shove away most of his toddler crabbiness and look at it objectively, that it was really a good transition. Clean, newly decorated, and big--at least in comparison to the little room Kurama had been stuck in--it was a vast improvement over the orphanage. There was an actual bed, shelves to host Kurama's vast book collection, a fridge for dango and pudding and ice-cream and very importantly, a clean bathroom. Hygeine was nice but not exactly prevalent in a space filled with screaming children and an underworked staff.

This lasted three days. Kurama organised his books, ate his candied fruit, and basically didn't get of bed. He tried to expand his sensory range in the meantime, carding through the residential sections of the village and poking beyond them. Meanwhile, the spawn scampered outside, exploring, and to his credit he only attempted to drag Kurama along with him once.

Afternoon of day three was when all the problems began to dawn.

"M hungry," the spawn whined, for the tenth time in five minutes. "Rama 'm _hungry_."

Kurama eyed him balefully over top his book. The solution seemed pretty obvious. "Then go eat something."

"I _did_. 'M still hungry."

"Then eat _more_."

A roll brought him to where Kurama was curled up. The little shit batted the book Kurama brandished between them away, his mouth twisted into a scowl. "I did! Ain't anything left to eat!

"There's always something."

The spawn flopped over mournfully. "Nu-uh. I even done the cookies, So ain't nothin' left."

Kurama paused.

"You what."

"All them cookies," confirmed spawn sadly, which was the last thing Kurama wanted to hear. A bare second later he seemed to have realized his mistake--or at least caught what was the undoubtedly horrifying expression on Kurama's face--because he froze, rolled out of range, and looked appropriately shifty-eyed. "Oops?"

"You ate all of the cookies," Kurama said, low and dangerous. He felt his nails dig into the laminated cover of his book.

"Uh--"

" _All of them?"_

"Maaaaybe," said the spawn, drawing out the syllables. And then he was out of the bed bed, footsteps pattering across the floor, darting through the crack in the bedroom door in a blurr that wouldn't have looked out of place during a body-flicker, even as Kurama untangled himself from his mass cocoon of blankets and went tearing after him.

"BRAT!"

 

* * *

 

 

So apparently, there was a very good reason human children stayed with supervising adult figures until they were a decade in, at least.

They had to be fed and cleaned, first and foremost, which in practice was disproportionately more cumbersome than Kurama would have expected. In the orphanage everything was taken care of for them. Three meals a day. Baths twice a week. Laundry distribution every Monday afternoon. Now the matron was nonexistent and thus it was them alone, or rather on  _Kurama_ , because the spawn had the brain of a concussed lemming.

First off: food. Humans needed food. It was essential to their continued survival.

The only three settings the spawn had concerning food was full, whining, or dead. If he wasn't full he was whining, and if he wasn't whining then he was dead. Either because he was dead from starvation or because Kurama was going to kick him out of a window before the whining drove him to homicide. Having already endured four years of this ridiculous, humiliating farce, there was no way in _hell_ the dratted spawn was going to die to anything but Kurama.

In light of all this, the point of little brown envelope stuffed with bills was suddenly much clearer. Money was now a thing Kurama apparently needed to learn to use.

They went to the market.

Kurama gripped the spawn by the arm and grimly dragged the little shit down five flights of stairs, half wobbling, thankfully not tripping, and by the last flight he just gave up and scooted his way down. He really did not like going outside, or anything to do with long distances in general. Kurama's garbage shell took to physical exertion like a fish took to tree-climbing, which was to say, not at all, and as expected, by the time they arrived at the market, he was wobbling dangerously and feeling rather sickly, with a headache building up behind his eyes.

"Wanna piggy-back?" the spawn asked, squinting at him.

Kurama made a strangled noise back.

The spawn looked perfectly fine. Unfazed, by the sun and the damned walking and the noise and the smell. Kurama elbowed him in veangence.

Then he squared his shoulders, drew up to his tiny humiliating height, set his scowl in place, and marched forward. The crowd, previously looming like redwood forests in front of a puny forest animal, parted. Humans did very well to get out of Kurama's path. That did was one aspect which did not change, no matter what he looked like, which was nice.

Unfortunately, this did not help with the actual shopping process. The stallkeepers kept pretending Kurama didn't exist and Kurama was barely two feet tall, even shorter and slighter than the spawn, with stick thin limbs and no muscle at all, which meant that he could neither see the goods or drag himself up to see the goods. He did a lot of outraged hissing that the stallkeepers pretended not to hear. He really wanted to bite them. And then the spawn started up again with his"I'm _huuungry,_ " so Kurama chucked a quarter of the money at the his blonde head and told him to go to the noodle man before justifiable murder was committed.

Ten minutes later, the spawn returned with three styrofoam containers full of noodles and dango skewers wrapped in a paper plate. Kurama had managed nothing, apart from the growing urge to exercise his too stubby arms by throwing rocks. Preferably at heads. The people smelled of hostility and felt like fear, which would have been pleasant if Kurama had not just walked half an hour and wanted to stab the sun in the face for this dizzying _heat_.

He wanted to stab everything in the face though, so it was not much of a standard.

He snarled audibly at the vegetable seller, baring teeth. The man's chakra _jumped_.

Still, he refused to look Kurama in the eyes, or anywhere in Kurama's general direction down. Kurama kicked his cart.

What in Father's name was he doing here? Right. Kushina's dratted spawn. Who ate five times more than Kurama any normal human, considering he'd vacuumed through fifteen packets of instant noodles in barely three days. Along with all of Kurama's cookies.

He glanced resentfully at the spawn.

"They never sell anything," said the spawn,  at what he probably thought was a stage whisper. It was not a stage whisper. The plastic takeout bag was dropped on the ground and he was slurping up his second cup of ramen, with the discarded carton of the first lying by his feet.  He offered Kurama the dango wedged under his elbow.

"I realize that," Kurama gritted out, and then bit viciously into one sweet, delicious, skewer.

His head pounded. The sun was too bright. There was dust clogged and eyes and mouth, the rank smell of fish in his nostrils, and he was feeling tired and resentful and terribly angry again. Kurama rubbed a hair through his hair, eying the bright strands that fell in his eyes. He scowled through his fringe as the spawn somehow plowed his way through his third cup of noodles.

Where the _hell_ did that all go. Sure the spawn was bigger than Kurama, but not by that much. Not enough to account for all that food intake.

Alright. Clearly, this wasn't going to work.

Kurama ate his dango, shredding the sweet chewy rice flour, leaving teeth marks on the wooden skewer. He eyed the marketplace and breathed in the barely capped fear and resentment. He debated his resources.

Plan B it was.

The first thing he did after trudging back to his apartment was scribbling out an itemized list. The topmost items were sorted according priority, important things like _candy_  and _cake_  and _mint-chocolate icecream._  Then he noted the spawn’s top three picks of instant ramen with a _buy in bulk_  starred next to it. Underneath that, Kurama stalled for a moment. He wracked his brain, filtering through blurry reminiscence of Kushina's teenage hole in the wall apartment, trying to remember what the essentials were for "how to live on your own, Jinchuuriki 101." _Eggs_ , he wrote, thinking of the fridge first, because once the spawn inevitably ran out of ramen Kurama would need a buffer for his sweets. _Milk, bread, rice, potatoes, chicken, vension, carrots. Snacks._ Then he went on to other utilities. _Soap. Cups. Toothpaste. Bowls. Plates. Chopsticks._

There were a lot of other utilities. Kushina's apartment, now that Kurama was playing a game of "I spy" inside of his own head, had had a lot of things. And all of these things were, on reflection, pretty essential in one way or another. Somehow. Because humans were possibly the least efficient species known to the universe.

Two days later Dog-brat came by, and Kurama chucked the list at his face along with the stipend envelope as soon as he got his obligatory candy packet.

"Go buy!" he demanded.

Dog-brat opened the stipend envelope, peered inside, and then uncrumpled the list. His signature rippled, bewildered.

"Go buy!" Kurama repeated, impatient. Dog-brat had shown himself at least able to follow basic instructions in the past. Kurama had even written everything out for him, perfectly legibly. Why was this so difficult.

He made a noise like a teakettle boiling over. Dog-brat looked at him, then around the apartment. He shook the list a little. Maybe his last mission had re-calibrated whatever intelligence was inside Dog-brat's head.

Dog-brat pointed to the list. Then himself, in a "me?" kind of gesture.

Kurama made a disgusted noise.

" _Obviously."_

When he left, it was in a whirl of leaves and air that made Kurama's hair billow into his mouth.

 

* * *

 

 

By afternoon, though, Kurama arrived in the living room to see the spawn attempting to fingerpaint Dog-brat's hair a violent purple, smudges of blue and green already on his arms and the edges of Dog-brat's mask. There was a colourful scattering of ceramic mugs on the countertop. Kurama checked the fridge to find it overflowing, green and root vegetables piled on top of one another, milk and eggs stacked together, the freezer filled in fish and frozen bread. Then the real prize of this whole endeavor: a cake, sitting neatly at the bottom, next to a carton of orange juice. Kurama eyed it. He lugged it out and put it carefully on the floor.

Plan B was evidently a success. Outsourcing to Dog-brat was the best option after all.

Kurama ate with his hands, smearing cream and jelly and chocolate all over his mouth. He finished a quarter of it, and then he hopped onto a stool and washed at the kitchen sink, before heaving the remainder back into the fridge. Dog-brat and giggling spawn were engaged in a wrestling match on the counter, and Kurama rolled his eyes at them. He pulled himself up onto the couch. An hour later, the spawn joined him in his sideways sprawl, finally tired enough to nap.

Dog-brat patted the spawn's head, earning a mumbled "I-nu." He patted Kurama's, which, considering the cake, Kurama was in a decent enough mood to simply ignore instead of more active discouragement. A warm lump burrowed into his side. Kurama twitched as the spawn's mumble sigh tickled his ribs.

Dog-brat gave Kurama a little wave. And then, a displacement of chakra, a flicker of air—a huge white lollipop took Dog-brat's place on the couch.

 

* * *

 

 

The good thing about the apartment was that it hosted a bathroom with one very frosted window. This way, unless the ANBU were literally on top of him—and Kurama would very well know if they were—there was no way for him to be spied upon. Fed cake and having finished a particularly long afternoon nap, Kurama waited until the spawn's breathing evened out into a slight, whistling snore. He checked the location of the ABU perched an apartment away before rolling out neatly from the couch, feet quiet as he made his way to the bathroom.

It was really about time he did this. Better day than night as well, because at night the ANBU legion were always increased. Before, there was the complete lack of secrecy that came with a complete lack of privacy, but now...

Kurama closed the door shut behind him with a nudge of his heel. The bathroom tiles were cool, smooth and slippery beneath his bare feet. He groped for the tiny stone counter, heaving himself upwards and fumbling for the switch in the wall. Once, twice, it flickered, before a stream of watery yellow light flooded the room.

Kurama hopped back down to the floor, retrieved the notebook and pencil he'd stashed away in the cabinet, behind the piping, then sat down. Pencil in one hand, he used his other to lift his T-shirt.

The skin of his belly was pale and olive tinged. It was tiny. All of him was tiny. It would probably take a century for Kurama to get used to having a human body, and a century he wasn't going to wait. Experimentally, he poked at it, and the soft flesh yielded without a token resistance.

This was, allegedly, where the seal was supposed to be.

A soft shift of chakra, swirling in his gut, pushing and cartwheeling beneath the skin. It took a moment for the webs of black ink to show. Just a snaking tendril at first, stark against the pale olive, then it expanded outwards in a twisting, labyrinthine knot of curving symbols and lines. The classic Uzumaki spiral sat in the middle. Balance and direction, channeling the energy flow and mending the rest of the characters into stability.

Squinting, Kurama shucked the shirt away for a more complete picture. He opened to a new page out of the notebook and set on re-drawing the... whatever seal it was. The base was an Uzumaki special Eight Trigams seal for sure, that he could tell just by looking at it. There was another layer added onto that though, a redirection of whatever amplifying and linking letters Kushina had slammed on last minute.

It was... messy.

Namikaze's seals had a certain delicacy to them, fine-tuned and elaborate as they were. They were beautiful and intricate and seemed to have half a dozen extra functions hammered within. Kushina didn't have the same particular flair as her husband, but her seals were usually clean and strong. Direct. What was on the page wasn't clean in the slightest sense. Instead, all of the different pieces had been meshed together hazardously: there was an array for _keep in_ next to _amplify_ , and a line joining two opposite sectors that really shouldn't be together.

Kushina had, quite literally, made the seal up in a haze of horror and last-minute desperation. How it had even worked instead of blowing up in her face was beyond Kurama's knowledge.

He copied it out. He needed a bigger sheet of paper for sure, he thought, chewing on the eraser nub of his pencil. There were parts that were delicate and tiny that Kurama would have to expand on later and in detail, itsy bitsy symbols blurring into one another. He didn't need to learn what all of it did, though. Just the important pieces. Just what was causing the separation between his conscious and his chakra. Just enough to know how to rip away that wall between them.

Very carefully, Kurama closed the notebook and placed it at the very back of the cabinet, hiding it in the thin divide between the wood of one sectioned space to the next. A look into the other cabinets showed that Dog-brat had bought laundry detergent and stacks of hard soaps as well, and Kurama dragged those into the piping section. He shoved them in, arranged them just so. Then he closed the door, washed his hands, and walked out.

The spawn was still fast asleep on the couch. From the light of the sky, it was just barely dusk, the horizon line shaded in pale peaches and muted yellows. Kurama took a step out and felt his pulse race fast, a _tap tap tap_ marathon, jittery and apprehensive and nervous and elated all at once.

He could finally see the seal. He could finally _break into_ the seal.

Everything about this situation was _wrongwrongwrong_ but now Kurama could see the first step to the way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The reason you are so small is because candy has zero nutritional value Kurama.  
> 2\. This chapter went overlength again and I only managed 1/2 of the content I wanted. Why.  
> 3\. If there's anything you particularly enjoyed, please let me know in a comment guys! I really appreciate it!


	6. Washing

Unfortunately, meetings with the Monkey-man occurred once every two weeks, and in the mornings. Kurama was not a morning person. He was just barely a noon person. Today was a Saturday, and instead of sleeping for two more hours in the cozy confines of his soft, fluffy bed, Kurama woke up to an ANBU shaking him awake and an alarm clock that read 8:30 a.m in chunky green lettering.

He barely had enough time to scarf down a cookie, get harried into changing into what was considered presentable clothes, and then with the spawn still making squinty bleary eyes at their surroundings and a half-growl stuck to the back of Kurama's throat, the ANBU heaved them both out of the balcony and towards the direction of the hideous Tower.

Monkey-man was drinking tea and making his way through a ream of paperwork when Kurama got deposited into huge lounge chairs opposite of him. Soft squares of sunlight splattered through the wide windows of the office. They diffused onto the floorboards, a wash of egg-yolk yellow onto the brown of the wood. He smiled at them. The gaudy hat was a true atrocity. Kurama,  legs swinging into air, scowled back.

This was bullshit. Ugh.

A chair and a half away, the spawn straightened from his zombified sleep daze and made a grab for the plate of mochi and the little paper cups of orange juice on the table. He took a bite into one, made a noise of happy contention, then reached out and grabbed another to press into Kurama's hand.

"It's chocolate," the spawn told him, before stuffing the rest of his mochi into his mouth.

Kurama eyed it.

The Hokage chuckled. The spawn snatched another mochi from the tray as Kurama lifted his new breakfast to his mouth. Splitting his own mochi in half, the spawn made a disgruntled expression down at the contents: soft, frozen green filling wrapped in white sticky rice paste. "Green tea," he muttered, clearly unimpressed. He waved a handful into the Hokage's face. "Old Man you want it?"

Kurama fished it out of the spawn's outstretched hand.

"It tastes fine," he retorted over the spawn's over-exaggerated face of disgust.

"Bitter," came the counter with a pout. "But you're an old, old Geezer anyways."

That was probably meant to be insulting, but Kurama was not actually four years old. He ignored the spawn’s jibes with a practiced ease developed from constant exposure and sunk his teeth into the mochi. Green tea wasn't _bitter_. It was sweet and delicious, with a soothing, tart undertone. Kurama rated it just below his blueberry syrup.

The spawn huffed but didn't elaborate, instead choosing to down a cupful of orange juice. That was nice. Silence was a concept to be treated with relish, because at four and a half Kushina’s spawn had a tendency of babbling circles around absolutely irreverent topics, with a four year old's sense of humor and a four year old's two dimensional interpretation of the world. Just listening to him ramble made Kurama's head hurt.

The Hokage allowed Kurama to swallow his food before dropping down the explosive tags of today's topic.

"Naruto," he addressed, with the spawn glancing up from stuffing his face to give a "Yeah Old Man?" of confirmation before continuing. "About the Academy..."

Hook, line and sinker. The spawn perked up from his food to shoot the Monkey-man a wide-eyed, baby-duckling expression of singular focus.

"It's been decided that you two will be admitted next month for the new term," the Monkey-man finished, smiling indulgently as the spawn forgot both the mochi and Kurama, rocketing upwards in an exuberant whoop of joy.

For his part, Kurama just barely avoided spitting out his ice-cream. An elbow nicked his ear as the spawn bounced from his chair, cheering wildly.

The spawn wanted to become a ninja. Of course he did. Children were easily awed by feats of strength and the parlor tricks shinobi used were dazzling in their eyes. The brat's limited human interaction--limited almost solely to ninja, with the ANBU and the Hokage--probably didn't help.

Kurama _did no_ t want to be a ninja.

It was a necessary part of the plan, keeping low and out of suspicion, but just because it was necessary didn't mean he had to like it. The political power balance required the village's two "Jinchuuriki" to be enrolled in their military, so it was out of his feeble, tiny human hands anyway. Kurama had been trying to delay the inevitability. The enrollment age was six, not four, though between the spawn's hour-long pleading and the bullshit pressure from the other humans insects, Monkey-man might have just decided to lower the entrance requirements.

That was not good. Kurama had just gotten the gist of this "herding and ignoring Kushina’s spawn phenomenon." He was not looking forward to being stuck with an entire class of hollering, screeching, human children.

"We're not technically legible," Kurama rallied.

The spawn, mid-way through another bounce up into the air made an indignant, squawking noise of protest.

"Well read, as always, my dear. Normally, yes." The Monkey-Man blew a long, scented plume of smoke from his pipe, smelling of something sharp and floral. "There are exceptions."

The spawn looked smug at this, planting an elbow into Kurama's ribs. "Because we're _awesome_."

They were not awesome. The spawn, in particular, was not awesome. He was a bouncing, talking ball of incompetence--Kurama could barely hold his attention for an impressive five minutes per subject on a good day--and despite extended efforts, the spawn still couldn't puzzle out anything above the picture-book section of the library.

"I'm not ready for the Academy," Kurama tried. He pried the spawn's elbow away on autopilot, and gave the Monkey-man a deeply meaningful look.

The Monkey-man was not to be deterred.

Kurama only kicked the spawn twice in the shin on their way down from the Tower, which, between his scream-loud babbling and the way he kept on jostling Kurama with every over-exuberant bounce, proved that Kurama had the patience of an actual saint. The Monkey-man strode beside them in a sweep of red and white robes. They went down the stairs, out the door and into the string of shops near the Clan Districts. Kurama paused in front of a looming department store with disdain. Above, the blinking neon sign read: _Open._

"We're going shopping?" he demanded, eying the double glass doors intendedly. "Why?"

"You _will_ need supplies," Monkey-man supplemented helpfully. "The Academy is a milestone."

The entire bottom floor of the department was filled with racks upon racks of ninja clothing. Monkey-man breezed passed them and up the stairs, with the spawn trailing along at his tail and Kurama glued firmly to the spawn's arm. The second floor held teetering bins filled with travel packs and weapons designed smartly as accessories, with the customers giving a cursory glance over to the Hokage's entourage and then focusing back on their own business.

Eventually, the Monkey-man halted in front a shelf stacked with notebooks and writing tools.

"Where's the ninja stuff?" Spawn frowned, face scrunched up. "I saw a real cool dagger-thingy back down. Old man, can we get _that?_ "

"School supplies," came the firm reply. There was a twitch to the Monkey-man’s lip that said volumes about his amusement as he steered  the spawn directly in front of the shelves.

Kurama was already leafing through the pages of the notebooks, tip-toeing with his shoulder leaned against the white plastic of the cabinet. There were hardcover ones, black and smooth journals with thick, good quality paper. There were the thinner, lined workbooks evidently meant for note-taking in school. A row of binders in bright colours marched along a higher shelf, and boxes of neatly packaged pens and markers were hung on a rack to his left.

"But... but what about all the shiny kunai and shrukein?" the spawn flailed his arms. "I don't want _pencils._  We already have enough of those."

A box of multi-coloured markers smacked the spawn on the forehead. "All your pencils are rubbish," Kurama informed the sulking, pouting brat. He'd already picked out five hard-cover journals and a fancy golden fountain pen, balancing the load on his arms.

"Just 'cuz you like doing that stuff doesn't mean I do..." His tone was grumbling, but he bounded over obediently so that Kurama could dump the purchases onto him and resume browsing. He picked out a few, grid-lined workbooks and a orange plastic folder to add to the pile, as well as the packet of markers. The spawn eyed the displays with a petulant expression, looking all two seconds away from blowing a raspberry.

He grabbed himself a rubbery, kunai-shaped eraser and a simple plastic pencil case, before turning away with disinterest. Kurama caught his gaze focusing on the distant wares, ninja-clothing and disguised weaponry stacked high in their respective boxes.

The Hokage marched them up to the register after they were done. The spawn bounced at his side, a towering stack of books blocking his head from view, but still managing to grumble about "Kunai and senbon and I saw these really cool shin guards and masks _old Maaaaaan,"_ all the way to the cashier. Kurama stuck his hands into the pockets of his shorts and kept his head fixed on the ground, narrowing his eyes at anyone that tried to glance in his direction. Strands of thick red hair fell into his eyes. It was getting long now, enough to hang down to his chin. Kurama brushed it out of the way just as the spawn launched into a detailed, winding sentence about the importance of pointy things in his education.

"You ain't no fun," the spawn finally huffed, having come to the end of his rant. The cashier loaded the rest of the purchases into plastic bags. Then they were off, with autumn's bare whisper a tingling brand at the back of Kurama's neck. The Hokage bid them a short goodbye near the intersection of the looming stores. Dust packed roads stretched in front of him, the sky a clear bluebird shimmer above Kurama's head. Unyeilding. Strong.

Kushina’s spawn spun in circles as he walked, even weighed down with three shopping bags. His arms and legs floundered, his hands morphing into odd, wide shapes to illustrate whatever new topic he had found--" _cool new jutsus and walking on walls, come on Rama!_ " When the odd market owner looked at them with a thinly veiled disdain, he pulled Kurama in close enough for their cheeks to crush together, banging rustling plastic against Kurama's knees, and spoke louder, more feverant, as if his words could echo and drown out the world. The earth. Loud enough to saturate cloth and skin and bone. Kurama felt the vibrations, rumbling through thin shoulders and into Kurama’s chest.

"Stop shouting, dimwit," Kurama muttered, nudging an elbow between the spawn’s ribs. What were words anyway? Just specks of collateral, of floatsom, so easily scrapped and discarded. He scowled, tight and red-tinged. "We have better things to do."

 

* * *

 

 

Friday was not a laundry day.

Nonetheless, Kurama found himself in the laundromat on a Friday afternoon, sprawled belly down, on the shaking, rumbling lid of a dryer currently in the middle of wringing all the excess water from his clothes.

Kurama had no quarrel with laundry in itself. It was a pain, but so was everything else, and his dignity wasn't quite so gone for him to fall into the realm of the slovenly. He kept the apartment neat and relatively clean. It was an old, ingrained lesson. There were lines that had be drawn when it came to hygiene and sanitation. If it started to stink, then it was either to be thrown out, washed, or set on fire. Clothes fell into the second category.

Still, laundry days were not _Fridays_.

"I'm bored," the spawn whined.

"You can wait the half an hour," Kurama snapped back waspishly. "You're the one that wanted to have something good to wear." Because the Academy was commencing in three days, and the spawn was absolutely _insufferable_. He kept on making "ninja stances" and chucking his rubber kunai all over the apartment, and his aim was poor enough that it was hitting everything other than the target. Turned out "Everything other than the target" had a range of: Kurama, the wall, the plates, the books, and the ceiling lights. What the spawn lacked in accuracy he made up for in power, and he'd shattered two lightbulbs along with a mug. Once the kunai made contact with Kurama's head it had promptly gotten hurled out the window.

Of course, the mere mention of the ridiculous ninja murder academy seemed to raise the spawn's spirits.

"We've gotta make a good _impersion_ , that's what we gotta." He beamed, rolling to his elbows, nudging the plastic orange laundry basket that sat next to him. "We're gonna make so many friends Rama!"

Friends. With tiny, inane, human ninja children. Kurama made a low scoffing noise that might have also doubled as a snort. "I severely doubt that."

The spawn was not to be deterred. "Or I can make friends and then I'll show'em to you, and they'll like you cuz' you're weird and funny and _Rama_."

The spawn’s train of thoughts were often completely indecipherable. Also stupid. Those two attributes fed into one another. "Is that supposed to be a good thing," Kurama wondered.

"Yeah! See, I'm gonna get so many, and some of them are gonna be mine _only_ but some of them are gonna be yours too cuz sharing and they're gonna like ramen and we'll them to Ichiraku's cuz we're grown-ups that live alone and have money and we'll have Inu bring over--"

Kurama tuned him out automatically. He should probably make an effort to avoid the brats, he thought. His impulse control was not great--that much even he could admit--and thus attempts at ripping off people's faces was a very real possibility. He could barely hold back his edge for Kushina’s spawn, and not even. He'd attempted before, very briefly, to be less sharp at the edges in order to cajole the boy’s trust, but Kurama's temper was a quick thing to tip, always had been, and in this situation the fuse was even shorter. The soft he'd been aiming for just didn't hold; every time he saw himself in a mirror's surface: red haired, wide eyed, small and utterly human, every time he saw Uzumaki Naruto: blond and whiskered, the culmination of every generation that had lead to Kurama's prison, of every generation that twisted ninshuu from something beautiful to something grisly, the anger would pound tidal waves through his ears and it would be harsh, sardonic Kurama snapping insults again.

He was calmest in spaces like these: The laundromats, with their white walls and cycling rumbling and no people. The days of the monsoon when it rained and Kurama drowned in it. Muffled under the dark covers, where he could pretend he was anywhere but in his current situation.

The academy classroom, no doubt, was going to be the exact _anti-thesis._

Children were really not sturdy. The spawn was what Kurama had eventually gathered to be an exception, mainly because Kurama's chakra had wrapped around his bodily systems like a yarn knit, but regular children were... not. They were more like Kurama in his current fool shell. That leveled the playing field a little. That also meant that, should Kurama try to rip their face off, he had a high likelyhood of actually succeeding.

He was sure that would be a beautiful way to get kicked out of the Academy, but the excess surveillance would  be more trouble than a few moments of satisfaction were worth.

"--And maybe one of 'em'll like books too even if I dunno why you would but you do and you can be n-uh-watchamacallit--nerds? Nerds yeah! You can be nerds together!"

On the other hand, if the brats were going to be anything like Kushina’s, than Kurama desperately needed to invest in a pair of good earplugs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Kurama is like, in a 65% better mood that last scene than the rest of this story possibly combined. Hmm.  
> 2\. A bit of a transition chapter. Next time: The academy.


	7. Academy days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurama ignores what he considers to be bullshit and Naruto attempts to make friends.

The first day of the Academy could have gone better.

Kushina's spawn was determined to get there _early,_ which meant he set the alarm clock to six a.m. on the previous afternoon, then spent the entire night wide-eyed and awake, running on jittery nerves and adrenaline. He poked Kurama every ten minutes to see if _he_ was awake, and that didn't do much to smooth over Kurama's disposition.

The night was a cocoon, thick and warm. Kurama sank deeper into the mattress, burying his nose into the material of the comforter. In his mind the sky was dark. Father stood in the middle of their circle, all nine tailed beasts gathered around him. He was telling them a story - one about a crow and a girl born of flowers and their quest to the Eastern lands, the rings of his staff clinking as he gestured, voice a hushed rumble. "And the dragon imparted his wisdom: _Speak and they shall listen, ask and they shall consider._ "

"Only sometimes," interjected Shukaku with a yawn. Kurama wanted to whack him over the head - _this was his favourite part -_ but he was on the opposite side of the circle from his eldest brother and would need to get past Father to be in range. 

Thankfully, Matatabi was more than willing to communicate Kurama's ire for him.

"Don't _only sometime_ s Father," Matatabi hissed, tail lashing. "You're being as impertinent as ever." Shukuku snorted, dismissive, and the next moment a ball of fire flickered into existence next to his ear, lurching forward like a vengeful snake. To Matatabi's left, Isobu subtly shifted out of the way, shell creaking as he skirted into Chomei's winged sprawl.

Shukaku batted at the fireball, undettered. "And you, dear sibling, are _much_ too uptight."

The fireball went for his eyes.

A snap of Father's fingers, and Matatabi's black fire puffed out of existence. Father sighed. "Remember your manners, children." He looked upon them, eyebrow arched in wry amusement. It was an expression Kurama was intimately familiar with. Then he smiled and his eyes were blindingly blue for a flash of a moment, and his voice was higher, shriller, and much, much louder.

_"Oi. OI. Are you awake?"_

Kurama woke up.

The spawn was shaking him by the shoulders, eyes glowing electric in the dim lighting and hair sticking up in messy blond tufts. His words were still booming on replay in Kurama's ears, echoing and rewinding in the way that said they'd been on repeat for a good while. Kurama clawed at the comforter with a incoherent mumble and drew them over his head, resolutely closing his eyes.

Then there was a swoosh of air, a swoosh of cold hitting his face. A swoosh of cold _everywhere._  Someone had ripped his blankets away.

Kurama made the effort to crack open one bleary eye and glower sluggishly at the spawn's face. "What?"

The spawn pointed at the calender hung on the opposite wall. "We have school today!" he said, and was practically vibrating with excitement. Or maybe that was just the usual excess of energy.

Kurama glanced at the calender, and then glanced at the blinking neon numbers on the alarm clock. The urge to throttle the spawn intensified.

It read: 6:30.

"I know," said Kurama, and pulled the covers back over his head.

There was another fierce pull, which meant that the spawn was trying desperately to wrench the entire bedspread off the mattress. Kurama tucked the sheets beneath his head like a pillow, warm and toasted in the soft material.

"We need to make a good _imperssion."_  The spawn's tone was aggravated. Past the barricade of fabric, his voice came out muffled and floating, rebounding in Kurama's eardrums. "This is our start to ninja-hood!"

The best course of action here, to regain his sleep, was to shove the spawn off the bed. Kurama poked his head out of the covers for a second, then, at the spawn's triumphant grin, groggily said, " _Your_ start to ninja-hood. _I_ don't want to be a ninja. Wake me up in an hour." Having stated his terms in full sentences, a rare luxury before noon, he burrowed back into the covers and kicked at the spawn until there was a soft thump against the carpet.

This proved to be a miscalculation.

Five minutes later, drifting leisurely back into floating gray, there was another _Swoosh_ of cold, the warmth deserting him to land on the carpet. A sharp intake. Then _IceWETCOLDCOLDCOLD_  erupted across his face. Kurama sat up so fast his head spun. The water taped his hair to his head in soggy strands, leaked down to splash across his T-shirt and shorts. "What," he bit, definitely awake now and attempting to snatch back the loose threads of composure Kushina's spawn had drowned, scrambling out of the soggy sheets onto the dry carpet. Everything was wet; Kurama stared around incredulously until his glower settled on the spawn, balanced on one of the wooden bedposts.  _"What was that?"_

The spawn hopped down and set the jug onto the bedside table with a lackadaisical swipe of his wrist. "You weren't getting up," he said.

"It is six thirty," Kurama enunciated, slowly. _"In which universe do you think I would like to have gotten up?_ "

The spawn, apparently, took this as a challenge. He wrinkled his nose in Kurama's direction and made a motion towards the door.  "The one where we grow up to be ninjas, which is this one."

"The correct answer is _none._ "

"None is _stupid_."

Kurama stared down at his clothes with a twitching grimace. Water dripped to the floor in sympathy.

He raised himself to his feet, wobbling. It was early, still, much early for this nonsense. The thin slit between the curtains showed a sky yawning itself into morning, awash in strips of gray and soft lavender. What little light there was spread weakly over confines of the room. There was a stack of books in the corner next a single, bare desk, a calender taped to the oppsite wall, a neat backpack slumped next to the door way. Kushina's spawn's store of emergency ramen, shoved in a box next the closet.

Kurama unstuck his shirt from it was hanging wetly, coldly, over his chest.

"Just." He scowled resentfully. "Nevermind. I'm _up,_ you hell-spawn. Now go something else. Like breakfast, preferably. I need--" Clothes. A bath. _Chocolate chip cookies._ "--to change."

"T's just a bit of water," the spawn grumbled, but he took it as his victory and scampered out the door and towards the kitchen. Kurama was halfway done wringing the water out of his shirt when the spawn hollered. "SHRIMP OR CHICKEN?" because they were having ramen for breakfast _again_ , and really, Kurama should have known better.

"I'm not eating this dratted noodles!" Kurama hollered back. "Don't you dare touch my cookies!"

"MORE FOR ME THEN!"

Kurama cleaned himself up in the bathroom and came out into the living area, hair still wet but everything else dry. He gave the spawn another glower as the boy slurped down his two noodle cups, seemingly at lightning speed, and then beelined for the cupboards.

He crammed two cookies the size of dinner plates into his mouth - oatmeal raisin, yum - as well as a glass of cold chocolate milk to wash it all down. By the time he was finished, the spawn had tossed his ramen cups into the recycling and was eying Kurama's cookie tin with mournful longing.

The spawn's puppy eyes had exactly zero effect on Kurama. He shoved the tin back onto the highest shelf, closed the cupboard, and then hopped down from the counter to the kitchen floor.

They were out the door and onto the road an entire two hours earlier than needed. "The academy starts at _eight-thirty,"_ Kurama repeated with vehemence, just for the sake of it, shoes crunching against the dirt roads. But the spawn was adamant, and Kurama had figured out two years in that when the spawn was adamant about something it was better to give him leeway and conserve the energy for later, more fruitful endeavors. Possibly, this was going to be a wrench in his plans, but Kurama was fairly certain that if push came to pull he could just knock the brat out and rip the seal open when the spawn was unconscious.

For now, he needed to play nice and pretend.

As expected, when the bleached white walls of the Academy came into view, there wasn't a single person around besides the two of them. Well, there were the ANBU. Kurama could feel their chakra signatures, pulled in a tight ball the size of his fist, and inside the stone walls of the Academy pulsating bits of light bobbed up and down the long corridors.

Outside though, there was no one. No humans. There was the grass and the trees and the hard earth beneath his feet, whose hymn was one Kurama knew in the marrow of his bones. Kurama had been one with nature, once, a long, long time ago. And even today, that heritage stayed. The heartbeat of the earth was the blood in his veins, the loping of his strides. When it stormed he could hear the lullaby of the rain in his ears, and the crescendo of lightning lit everything up in branding white.

The World was one big song, Kurama knew, and each spark of chakra was its keynotes.

"FIRST!" the spawn crowed, throwing his arms up. He looked entirely too happy, considering the lack of people around and the long wait in front of them. The courtyard was a place of packed earth and a few, straggly looking grasses, surrounding by forest covering. There was a little swing strung up with a piece of plywood and rough-looking rope. The spawn beelined for it, hopping on, legs kicking up in the air with a loud, exaggerated noise. "Rama! Push me!"

As any intelligent being ought to do, Kurama had packed food pre getting herded out the door. He opened his zip lock bag and stuck a chocolate into his mouth.

"Fuck no. Swing your legs yourself if you wanna gain height. Sage knows you have enough energy."

The spawn considered this, blinking. He mouth opened into an "o" of revelation.

"Oooh. Wait, is that how the big kids do it? That's _awesome._

Furious kicking quickly proceeded. Kurama shuffled over the shade, away from any accidents should the spawn accidentally fall off, close enough to be buffered by shade. He debated the merits of sleeping on the grass. It was still wet with dew, but it was also soft and sweet-smelling and really, compared to the sudden ice shower earlier in the morning, a little wetness wouldn't be a big disconfort.

Kurama snagged one of his three emergency ear plug pairs out of his pocket and put them on. "Wake me up when the bell comes on," he informed the spawn, lying down with his head pillowed in his arms. "Or don't. You can go and follow your stupid dreams yourself, leaving me out of it."

"Gotcha Rama!"

The spawn laughed; Kurama went to sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The Academy teacher made a very studious and very complete attempt to ignore their existence, most likely going by the rule that "if you deny it long enough it will go away." The man looked in his mid-forties, with stress lines and an expression of extreme severity set in his face, and chakra that felt like banked coals. His name was something Kurama had blocked out along with the introduction, because the spawn's indoor etiquette was sorely lacking and it was unlikely that Kurama would be able to hear anything over the constant stream of whispering - which couldn't actually be considered whispering, because the spawn's outside and inside voices were of the same decibel levels.

Eventually, Kurama figured, Coal-worm was going to get annoyed enough to fling a piece of chalk of the spawn's head. Or just bellow at him to shut the fuck up. Either way, it would mean that he'd have acknowledged the spawn's existence. 

The other children were already craning their necks and shooting annoyed looks at them from the front of the classroom. At least that was part one of the spawn's "pay attention to me!" plan sorted out. Placing them at the very back of the classroom had obviously backfired on Coal-worm. If he wanted the lesson to get anywhere, he would actually need to hear his own voice past the sound of the spawn's run-on sentences.

Not that the spawn was aware of that development. He was still blabbering, just in a tone that the spawn and the spawn alone considered to be quiet. Every so often he glanced up at the chalk board and copied down what Coal-worm was scribbling down in shaky, jagged looking strokes of pencil, biting his bottom lip when he couldn't get the words to match quite right.

Kurama placed his head down on his own very blank notebook and dozed.

Filtering out the spawn's voice into background static was an automatic habit by now. The earplugs were very good, but this close they couldn't mitigate every thing, especially since the spawn talked in flailing hand gestures and knees hitting desk as much as actual words. Reverberations traveled up the wood and into Kurama's arms and head. Thankfully though, the spawn in question was too busy scrutinizing the teacher and the board to realize Kurama's lack of attention. He got a good solid hour of sleep, the smelling paper and wood, until the steady murmuring abruptly escalated into a high, indignant squawk.

"HEY!" Came the spawn's voice, several shades louder and not quite the hiss of rain anymore, easily ignored at the back of Kurama's mind. "It's Hana _. Hana."_

Coal-worm's chakra twitched in distinct annoyance. Raising his head, Kurama shuttered open his eyes just in time to see Coal-worm's jaw clench. He had developed a twitch near his temple sometime when Kurama had been dozing, and looked another syllable away from chucking his folders at the spawn's head.

The spawn had a gift for obnoxiousness that way.

"Uzumaki," said Coal-worm, tone like grinding stone. "Answer when you are being asked to. And _only_ when you are being asked to."

"But you weren't picking me," the spawn protested. "And I got right. I know I got it right." Then, as if realizing something, he nudged Kurama beneath the table with one knee and dipped his volume back into a conspiring whisper. "I did get it right, right?"

Kurama squinted at the large, bold words on the chalk board which did, indeed, say _Hana_ and grumbled out a "yep." Really, even if this were only a first year class, they could have at least been more creative about it.

"Pay attention," hissed the spawn, as Kurama went back to sleep.

"You do that," Kurama muffled at him.

The rest of the day dragged on in a whirl of introductory lessons, which Kurama slept through, and the spawn's ill-concealed elbowing, which, though harder to ignore, was nonetheless canceled out by the sheer monotonous drone of Coal-worm's voice. Kurama was abruptly knocked awake for lunch outside, still drowsy as he shoveled through a cup of noodles and the spawn rammed his way into the tentatively gathering social circles of children.

"This is like a set up to be disappointed," he told the spawn, when he trudged back scowling something ferocious.

Afternoon lessons continued. Kurama stayed awake and doodled nonsense in his notebooks, feeling the flicker of tiny life forms moving through the building as his pencil looped shapes into the paper.

The second half of the school day heralded a renewed flailing of arms and legs, courtesy of the spawn bouncing back from his little misadventure at lunch. By the time the final bell rang, Kurama felt as if his eardrums had been ruptured thrice over. He kicked the spawn in the shins as the he skipped across the pavement, an obnoxiously large grin plastered over his face, his fingers snapping at the straps of his backpack.

That afternoon, Monkey-man paid them a visit. Kurama had to suffer through an hour of the spawn describing every _single tiny thing_ that happened during the day, and five minutes into the rant just put his earplugs back into his ears. They did, however, eat dinner at Noodle-man's place. That was nice. Ever since Kurama's first visit, Noodle-man had since included a delightful new selection of dango, little mochi and sweet tea-jellies into his menu, all of which Kurama got for free.

Kurama did not have favourites, but on a scale ranging from _will atomize and eat your puny mortal souls_  to _barely, vaguely, somehow tolerable_ , Noodle-man ranked very high on the latter end.

He even got a takeout container full of dango for his trip back to the apartment.

The next day was yet again another school day. Fortunately, the spawn did not attempt to bring the house down around Kurama's ears at six o'clock. Unfortunately, when afternoon came around, he did attempt to corral Kurama into _exercise_.

The teacher had just finished explaining laps, and a gaggle of children stood at the edges of a sprawling training field. Kurama sat on an edge completely different from them, well shaded by the broad leaves of an oak tree.

"C'mon!" the spawn wheedled, waving his arms as if that would somehow make Kurama agree to laps.

Kurama narrowed his eyes and hissed like a cornered rattlesnake.

Honestly, it was a stroke of good fortune that Kurama's escape plan - even vague as it was in current stages - distinctly lacked the need for any manner of physical conditioning. For one, human bodies were pathetic. For another, Kurama loathed exercise, with the deep frustration only someone who was born entirely mobile, with exhaustion as a alien concept, could. If it wasn't helping his escape and wasn't helping his cover, Kurama had no reason to engage in it.

Whichever stupid human had deemed it "mandatory" could piss off.

" _Good impressions_ ," the spawn pressed.

"Whistle's about to be blown," Kurama remarked, flicking a finger to the opposite side of the field.

"Wha?" the spawn turned his head. "Wait. Aggh - No! Don't start _without_ me!"

He scramble forwards. One mis-step later, and the spawn was face-first in the grass before righting himself, this time with additional grass stains on his elbows and knees, and then rocketed towards the starting point.

Kurama cracked open his notebook and started to write.

Despite Kurama's refusal to engage, in, well, pretty much anything (the Monkey-man may have had him registered and Kushina's spawn may have dragged him through the front doors, but no one could physically force him to the training field, just as no one could physically make him do the distasteful homework) the spawn remained in remarkably high spirits. It took three entire weeks for the jittery excitement to wear off.

But three weeks passed. It passed with the spawn dragging Kurama through the Academy gates every morning, and the spawn studiously doing his homework, and the spawn trying and failing to wheedle a real kunai set out of the Monkey-man. But really, being a ninja was only one of the spawn's hopes for the Academy. And his other goal, which in theory should have been far easier to accomplish, did not come to pass.

The other bratlings avoided him fastidiously. Three weeks passed, and the spawn still did not have a friend.

It was not, however, for a lack of trying.

Possibly, Kurama reflected, it was because he tried too much. Kurama would have rather hurtled himself off a cliff than have to engage in routine conversation with someone so obnoxious. But from what he had observed, all snot-nosed human children were like that. More likely it was because the jinchuuriki situation, which, after a century of being underneath figurative lock, key, and ten levels of red tape, had become... _not so secret._

_Ninjas._

Kurama didn't particularly care either way, as long as no one realized Uzumaki Menma, also known as "Rama" was not actually a jinchuuriki. Solitude was something he was used to. 

Kushina's spawn was a different story.

"I'll make'em see," he muttered over his homework, biting his lip as he stared at what looked like a diagram of human anatomy. "I'll _make_ them see." His chakra trembled, hurt and angry and confused.

In response, Kurama made a sound. It wasn't agreement, necessarily, but it wasn't a dispute either.

He didn't mention the laundry room; three weeks ago, all joyful excitement. The: " _We're gonna make so many friend_!" 

It didn't matter, anyway.

The spawn was actually good at academics. He kept up easily in the classroom walls, with his rudimentary reading and writing capabilities. His endurance was top-notch. His accuracy with throwing projectiles was abominable, but he made up for it in the introductory "getting used to hitting other people" spars in that he could out-last most of his opponents, as long as they weren't major clan children.

He was... not doing excellent, but pretty good.

But then they introduced math.

Not simple math. Addition and subtraction, the spawn could do. He wasn't great at it, but with a few sheets of paper the kid could struggle through the numbers and reach the correct answer. The problem was the division, and the multiplication, and the flurry of fractions and factoring.

Basic arithmetic should have been easy, but the spawn's brain revolted against numbers in a context away from addition and subtraction. After the third time explaining _carry the two, add it on later, no long division doesn't work that way what are you doing_  Kurama had been red-faced, ready to flip the table. He was so _done._

It was good that the spawn had decided to pester Dog-brat for math help after Kurama had stormed out in a huff. Genius or not though, Dog-brat seemed just as inept at explaining it as everyone else, and by the end of his fourth study session, the spawn had chucked his wad of scribbled papers at Dog-brat's head and actually upturned a table. The academy teachers took their lengths to avoid them, so the spawn wasn't getting encouragement there either. Between that, and the introduction of geography, the spawn's grade plummeted and his mood dropped even lower.

He was, for a lack of other words, prickly.

"You don't try," the spawn burst out one day, expression unhappy. They were gathered by the coffee table in the living room, Kurama sketching old seal designs and the spawn with his school bag sprawled across his lap, notebooks and homework sheets gnawing through the little empty space they had. He scowled down at the page of division homework. "You always know the answer to everything but you don't _try_ and it's not fair. It's dumb and you're dumb and I hate it."

"I told you. I don't want to be a _ninja_ ," Kurama said back, not glancing up from his half-drawn seal array.

It wasn't as if school was _difficult_ or anything near that spectrum. Kurama's mental age was a great deal more advanced than even the oldest human alive, and undergoing primary education was a tedious, menial task. He could skip, if he wanted to. But the spawn was adamant about proving both their worths to the general public, and arguing against a five-year old logic was the same as fighting a brick wall with his current body. Basically: loss was imminent and Kurama knew when to pick his battles.

So Kurama went, but for the most part he ignored everything.

He doodled in class. Part of it was obscure seal theory, done in absurdly messy shorthand--the easier to pass it off as "scribbles" with--and part of it was just random cutsy pictures. Sometimes he went outside when it came to weaponry practice and fixed the spawn's terrible posture into a mildly acceptable one through scathing insults.

Not that the spawn appreciated his efforts. The little shit whined and seethed and made big-eyed, pouty-liped faces in his direction at any given time. Kurama even helped him with his homework, for the Sage's sake. The human body parts. Chakra 101.

The spawn's eyes were very, very blue as he leaned over, face twisted into something furious. "It doesn't matter you don't wanna be a ninja. You still have to _try_. The Old Man said so, if we wanna ever ac-hi-eve anything we need to give it our all!"

Personally, Kurama was pretty sure he was more productive than all the other seven year olds in his useless class blended together, he just also happened to leave all his worksheets blank or scribbled with cartoon pastries.

"Well," he said, pinning the spawn with narrowed eyes, "What if I don't want to achieve anything?"

The spawn wrinkled his nose. "Nu-uh, Rama. Everyone wants _something_."

Which was true, Kurama supposed. It was just that Kurama's goals did not lie in the Academy, or Konoha at all. Well, maybe Konoha. If having everything and everyone inside it dead counted.

But that was not a thought to be expressed out-loud. Instead, Kurama jabbed his pen in the direction of the kitchen. "Yes, well, I want all the rock candies in the world. Do I need to go to try to get them? No." Dog-boy was beautifully efficient that way. Kurama scowled in the spawn's direction. "Good enough?"

"No," said the spawn, tone a perfect mulish replica of Kurama's.

"Too bad."

 _"No,_ " the spawn repeated, and then lunged over the table to yank the pen out of Kurama's grip.

They went backwards in a heap, Kurama jerking backwards automatically to keep the pen out of the spawn's clumsy fingers and overextending, the spawn's momentum carrying him across and bowling Kurama to the ground. Kurama managed a strangled grunt. The spawn's forehead smacked his collarbone. With a resounding _thwack,_ the wooden floor of the apartment met the back of Kurama's head _._

"I hate," he gritted, through the haze of pain. "Everything."

"No you don't. You just don't trrrrry."

Kurama could not believe they were back onto this topic of conversation.

"What inane point is there?" he snarled, kicking up to no avail. The spawn was stuck on _tight._  "For the--oh you know what, it's not like you listen. There's no point giving anything for such a stupid occupation. I let _you_ do whatever you want. Don't lecture me."

The spawn bit the offending hand trying to smack him across the nose, the little shit. This was one habit Kurama regretted passing on. "You don't lecture me _then_. Always go'in  _brat this, brat that._ How am  _I_ the brat, you're shorter! An' smaller!"

"I know a thousand times more on anything you can ever fit into your tiny pea-brain," Kurama seethed. "For someone who can't even _multiply_ \--"

"Yeah well screw _math_! Why do ninjas need math. At least I do my work. You just drool in class!"

"I don't _drool._ "

"I see you drool!"

Twisting his shoulder, Kurama hooked a leg over the spawn's knee, yanked the spawn's hair for leverage, and then flipped them over. The spawn bit Kurama's hand harder in vengeance.

"I - mmph!"

That was possibly supposed to be actual words, but Kurama's elbow found its way onto the spawn's mouth soon enough for it to be cut. Unfortunately, he recieved a kick to the bend of his knee in return. The spawn twisted. Kurama's head smacked the floor for the second time. Yowling, he sank his fingers into cloth and attempted to wrench.

"Get _off!_ "

His forehead hit something hard. _For the love of the Sage._

"Rama you poo-head!"

It only devolved from there.

By the time it seemed like the spawn's vocal cords, if not the rest of him, were too worn out to continue, Kurama had sorely exhausted his energy reserves. They lay bedraggled on the wooden floor, Kurama with his forehead pressed against the leg of the table, the spawn eagle sprawled with a splotch of ink starting from his nose and soaking down his shirt. Kurama's notes were absolutely ruined. There was a scrap piece of paper stuck to his cheek with a congealing ink smear.

"Tell you what," Kurama said. He rolled over, squinting at the ceiling light. "You do all that stupid ninja stuff, I'll make..." He paused. The next part was an infringement what little dignity he had left, but after a moment he managed to pry the words from his throat with only minimal disgust. " _Super awesome ninja techniques_ for you to learn."

"But the ninja part's the _best_ part!"

"And suffice to say," Kurama sighed, "I don't want it."

The spawn scooted over the two inches separating them, until they were pressed, shoulder to shoulder, and scowled. "You always say that."

"It's the _truth_ , you nitwit."

The spawns's response was sullen. "Yeah, well, I bet you don't know any good moves anyway."

Kurama knew all the good moves. Most of them could reduce a mountain range to bedrock upon detonation, and required far more chakra than any human was capable storing up. If push came to shove, he would grudgingly admit he had knowledge of some more tiny-insect orientated jutsus as well. Yes, Kurama had been wedged stuck within the hollow of two grueling  hideous souls for a century, but they were souls that belonged to ninja.

"Of course I know. What do you think I read?" He paused. "No wait, don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question. The point is that I can teach you, so long as you can fit it into your nitwit brain, and also so long as you stop trying to get me to... _ninja._ " He said the word with a wrinkled nose and a curled lip like it had personally decided to desecrate his father's grave, which it technically did. "I'll be brains, you be the brawn."

The spawn didn't even make good brawn, frankly. Sure, he was easy to point around, but he was loud and ridiculous and five. Five year olds as a rule did not make good brawn.

For a moment, there was quiet.

Out from the corner of his eye, Kurama could see the intermingling of red and palehair, the long strands of Kurama's snagging on the spawn's shorter blond. the spawn was frowning, a short, sharp tug at the edge of one mouth. Finally, he ventured, "So it's uh. What's it called? Play'in on our strengths an' all that?"

"That's the correct saying, yes."

"I know," the spawn said. He rolled, and they were face to face again, the spawn's face scrunched up in a porcupine's caricature of thought. "So... you do the library ninja thing? Like making up jutsus. And I do the ninja-ninja thing. Like fighting bad guys and rescuing princesses."

Library ninja, Kurama was sure, did not actually exist as an available field. There were code breakers and intelligence and psychoanalysts and the librarian may have been retired shinobi, but there were no _library-ninja_. Whatever. It had done its job. The spawn had latched onto this idea, this alternative, and although budging the shithead's world view was a task of completely herculean proportions, Kurama knew that once an idea truly settled, it could not be pried back up.

The spawn did not let go of things easily.

"If you want." Kurama's tone was dismissive, but here, the last hook: an allowance. _If you want._ And of course Naruto wanted. Naruto wanted because humans were made to, because children were made to.

His answering beam was blinding. A hand scrambled for Kurama's, child soft and tanned.

"We are going to be the best team _ever_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've broken 3,000 hits folks. Thank you so much!  
> 


	8. Truth in Halves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teaching is attempted, backstory is explored. Between Kurama's temper and the typical five-year-old's disconnect between brain and mouth, something is finally said that he really does not need out.

Five days later found Kurama sitting cross-legged on the roof of the apartment, trying to teach the spawn chakra-control exercises.

 It had been a very dragged out five days. Unsubtle pestering had risen to the top of the spawn's priority list - at every opportunity possible - and when Kurama pointedly ignored him said pestering naturally transitioned onto its next stage. Which was sulking. Mulish, baleful-eyed sulking that finally marked the end of Kurama's ability to procrastinate. Uzumakis averaged a patience trial of a week, and as soon as the excitement turned over to prickly petulance, there would be water buckets over Kurama's mid-afternoon naps.

Water buckets punctuated by _screeching._

Kurama already had to experience that once, in the two week war of _Why Kurama is or is not Going to the Academy When He Could be Sleeping Until Noon Instead_ , which the spawn had somehow  _won._ He really did not want an re-inaction of that, especially when the whole point of this exercise was for Kurama to have peace.

 

And, well, to slowly inch himself along the Plan of Konoha's Atomization, of course, but at this point his standards had dipped considerably and it was mainly just fervent prayers for peace.

Kurama tore out a page of his notebook, held it in front of the spawn, and shook it pointedly. It was the cheap, flimsy kind, dollar-store quality that could be spared en-mass. "Here," he said. The spawn leaned forward and squinted.

"... What's that supposed to do?"

"Part one of jutsu creation," Kurama managed in disgruntlement, "is _c_ _hakra-control_."

"The weird squibbly energy?"

_Weird squibbly energy._  Was _that_ how they put it in their textbooks? No wonder humans were useless. "No," he said, and then realized that meant he'd have to explain exactly what chakra consisted of, in a comprehensible manner, and thought better of it. Large words were not the spawn's fort. "Well yes. Sort of. I suppose. If you stretched the definition." Stretched the definition by _a lot._

Really, the spawn was better with visual demonstrations anyway. Kurama motioned to come closer, which he did, stretching out knobbly legs on the rough cement as Kurama pasted the paper to the outside of his arm. He pulled up a trickle of chakra. Just a bit - Kurama didn't have much in the first place. There was just barely enough to heat up a cup with the portion that wasn't walled behind shatterproof seals - and coaxed it carefully underneath that patch of bare skin. He could feel the paper smoothing out. The dense energy pull did its job until the paper lay flat, and when Kurama was satisfied he held his arm towards the spawn.

"Try to pull it off," he ordered.

"Oookay?" the spawn wondered, and pinched where the paper was, consequently pinching Kurama's arm - _ow -_ and yanked.

"I said _pull_ ," Kurama yelped, jerking his arm away from the force of the spawn's fingers. "Not pinch!"

"Same difference. What's it supposed to do anyway?"

"You'll see if you _try pulling_."

He did. Grabbed a corner of the sheet, turned his wrist, and didn't pull so much as tried to tear. The paper didn't budge.

Even after the spawn manhandled Kurama's arm upside-down it stayed. He rubbed one thumb along the edge of the sheet, brows crinkling in concentration. "It's not wet," the spawn muttered. "Huh. But, uh... how is this super awesome?" he eyed the sheet dubiously. His nose scrunched. "I can do better with glue."

Dourly, Kurama said, "If you manage this on your feet, consistently, you should be able to walk on walls."

_That_ caught the spawn's attention. His mouth opened, a perfect O, and then he leaned over to snatch the notebook from Kurama's grip. "Really?" A ripping _sccht_ , and the spawn was slapping the page on his forearm, one hand over, staring at it in intense concentration. The moment he let go, the paper crinkled and swept away on the wind.

The spawn rocketed to his feet and jumped after it, dived, and skidded to a halt some meters away in a face plant.

" _Not like that_ ," Kurama sighed, with an  _ugh_  kind of tone. He waited until the spawn scampered back, paper clenched in his fist, before hauling him down and placing one hand on his arm. Chakra redirected under Kurama's skin, a congealing warmth. He let it spark out, let it sink into the spawn's systems. What energy circulating through his coils was ninety-percent Kurama's anyways, a harsh torrent of wind-fire force completely overwhelming the blue threads that were the spawn's own, threatening to overflow if not for the net of Namikaze's seal. It felt like molasses, thick and slow and heavy, too much density compressed into a too-small system. Nearly pure yang to Kurama's yin. Two sides of the same coin. "Here, feel that?"

The spawn nodded, eyes narrowed intendedly.

Kurama unlatched his fingers. "Now focus and _pull._ "

Ten minutes later, the first sheet of paper exploded.

There was a crackle, a short _pop_ , and Kurama looked up to the sight of paper disintegrating in the breeze. Some of the pieces had an orange glow to their edges. They were quickly extinguished, flaking away to ash and black char.

"Oh _cool_ ," exclaimed the spawn.

"You're supposed to make it _stick_ ," said Kurama pointedly.

"Yeah yeah," the spawn said, dismissive. His eyes were zeroed in to the last of the dissipating ash, gone with the breeze.

The next half an hour was filled with more crackling-pops, more half-blackened bits that smelled of chakra-fire and ash. Kurama eyed the growing pile of mangled paper tucked under the spawn's knee, switched for another new sheet everytime disastrous control met with a delicate surface.

Well, at least he'd managed to get the chakra out of his body. Sort of. It was not a ringing commendation. A newborn summons, Kurama knew, could do better via instinct.

He thought about - correcting it. Helping. It was honestly pathetic to watch. Kurama's chakra was in the brat's veins, and Kurama's chakra, temperamental, violate, and seething as it must be, would listen to its other half, even with a strained connection. But no, that wasn't the point of this endeavor. At least not at this very moment. The spawn needed some semblance of control - it was necessary for the plan to work - but he didn't need perfect or even to be within a light-year's worth of perfect. Even if the spawn lived to the end of his natural lifespan, Kurama doubted he would ever get close. Chakra may have assimilated well since Kurama's birth, but it had not been meant for human hands.

The chakra of a Tailed-Beast, chained and humiliated, was lucky not to kill. 

Kurama just needed the spawn to walk walls. That was the pinnacle of control needed, the ability to shape chakra to a certain degree, since Kurama certainly didn't have the reserves to perform his required jutsus. He would rather not the spawn go any further, frankly.

And he had time for that.

Granted, he didn't have _that_ much time, because human fallacies were not about to disappear on command, no matter how much he cursed. But he had enough. Enough to ration this lesson out slowly.

Most importantly, while the brat was all over himself at this new exciting novelty, Kurama would finally be able to _sleep_.

He stood up to leave. The spawn had selected blocks of focus every once in a while, when there was something "cool and awesome" to capture his attention accordingly. Kurama would give this a week - the spawn like glowing fiery things -  maybe more if he progressed to sticking instead of just... burning.

Page nine or maybe nineteen had the gall to smack him mid-smother. Kurama clawed it off his face with a splutter, glowering, and the spawn laughed.

 

* * *

 

Dog-brat was prone to absence during March and May.

March, when it rained, May, just as the heat dipped past the brink of spring and summer descended upon Konoha in a haze of pollen and traders. It was an ongoing pattern. Five year's worth. Some years he started as early February, just before the snow began to melt, stretched his time away through to late May. Some years he dropped by in April. Some years he didn't visit at all, until June began. 

 Coming back, the twerp smelled like he'd rolled around in a bloodbath. There was always decay under his armour and hospital disinfectant caught in his bandages, chakra an exhausted, congealed mess that made Kurama want throw up. It had been irritating when Kurama was two, a nuisance when he was three, and when he was four Dog-brat had arrived at the orphanage mid-march with the scent of chakra-blood under his nails and that thrice-damned Sharingan eye _pulsing_ , a ripple-swirl of chakra that Kurama could feel all too keenly even with a room and two sets of masks covering Dog-brat's face, familiar and wretched - blood moons and cherry eyes and black fire - and Kurama, equal parts terrified and so furious he was going to burst from his own skin, had wanted nothing more than to rip that _stupid thing out of Dog-brat's socket and crush it._

In a show of extreme sensibility, Dog-brat had barely lingered a full thirty seconds before taking off again. He didn't turn up again until May, once again reeking of ozone-char and chakra exhaustion, but the Sharingan was contained. Closed off. Dormant as it should be.

Dog-brat wasn't one of Indra's line. His eye was _transplanted_. He didn't have the Mangekyou.

Kurama had to remind himself of that. It was... a suspicious reaction. White-out instinct, for a moment.

But then again it wasn't like Kurama had been near a lot of Uchiha-eyes since that last catastrophe. Maybe it was just the shell's evolutionary alarms squeaking. Suspicious or not, he wasn't going to poke around those red pinwheels until he was bigger and ready to bijuu-dama them from existence. That was just common sense. 

 

* * *

 

Kurama baked in his free time.

Mid march meant that Dog-brat's last appearance was two weeks ago without a hair seen since, presumably runnning missions. Part of Kurama was relieved. Sharingan-related episodes were not productive - if Kurama had _actually_ tried to rip Dog-brat's eye out the number of gradually decreasing watchers would have definitely tightened. Another part was, as customary, irritated. Dog-brat had had the sense to delegate food duty to someone else in his absence, but that "someone,"  was partial to vegetables instead of cake.

Kurama was _not_ partial to vegetables

So he baked.

He was not spectacular at it. The stove was still too high to reach, even with a stool. Mixing the batter was exhausting and tedious for his tiny child muscles. It was not to be a delegated task either, since the spawn's attention span remained that of a gnat's on ninety percent of topics, this included. His first cake turned out lumpy and kind of hard. He gave it to the spawn, letting him demolish it with gusto. Kurama squinted at the instructions at the back of the cake-mix box, flour on his cheek. Then he went and got two cookbooks from the library, including _: a beginner's guide to kitchen vocabulary._

Apparently, the oven needed to be pre-heated. Or something.

Outside, it rained - monsoon weather. Light drizzles. Downpours that swallowed the streets. Sunshowers on mornings where the dew had yet to evaporate. In lighter weather, Kurama bundled himself up in his sweater and good sandals and went outside, notepad tucked in the crook of his elbow, skirting the back-alleys and mad zig-zag of laundry lines and wiring that ran across the village. "I'm making a map," he told the spawn, a mistake which promptly inflicted a five-hour dash hauled across two and a half districts to see "All the good spots Rama lemme show you - oh hey there's the angry cat!" and trudging back at six in the evening smelling of rotten fruit. He forced the spawn into the tub. There were glittery pink bath bombs to select from.

Still, when not accounting for _larval stage interference,_ March was a good month for making notes. Dog-brat had always been the most vigilant of his watchers.

When it poured though, Kurama stayed in. He perched on the balcony with a steaming mug of hot milk, close enough to hear the patter of the rain on the roofs and metal pipes but far enough not to get lashed with it. "You look like an old man, just sittin' there," piped the spawn, but still joined him. He stole the rest of Kurama's milk, staining the corners of his mouth white, and Kurama opened his eyes a sliver and said, very dryly, "I quite enjoy being old, thanks."

He tilted his head up and listened.

It sang, the sky and the earth. Sweet, high, lofty little notes that rang so different from its usual reverberating bass. Strands of white and pale blue twisted at the back of Kurama's eyelids, twined with the loamy green-gold of the earth's chakra, like reflections of sunlight on water. Underneath, the earth rumbled. From the stone of the apartment walls and down, there ran a fine shuddering, into the crust, to the lick of lava in the mantle, to the beating core of this planet's molten heart. Kurama could feel it always; these were his elements, the whole of him without the sentience. Fire and heat compressed to such a degree that they could shift the tectonic plates, the boiling and cooling of convection currents, giving birth to mountain ranges one inch at a time, a power that could rise islands and bury mountains. 

The spawn leaned over his shoulder. Kurama could feel the tickle of fine hair against one cheek. Stray droplets flicked at his nose, his bare shins, and the spawn yawned and put his head into the crook of Kurama's neck, dangling himself over the back of the chair, muttering,"You know, maybe your hair should be _blue_ instead."

"I don't actually want to know what goes on in your walnut head," Kurama told him, not bothering to open his eyes.

Water was not Kurama's element, but fire was not one he could reach. These days, there were far too many layers between them. Water was a different creature - Isobu's and Saiken's. It whispered. It coaxed. It lashed out in thunderstorms and tsunamis. To Kurama, it was a remnant of the olden ages when the Bijuu were one, a tapestry of blue-green-silver flute song.  When it rained he let himself drown. He closed his ears and closed his eyes. The water filled his head to the brim, turned his thoughts into distant white noise, like hearing the world through a conch shell.

It made him mellower and quieter. Almost charitable, on good days. On quiet evenings he found himself humming beyond the drum of the rain - about the stonemasons, or the first cutting of rice, or the sakura blossoms in spring. Old, worn, familiar songs. Father used to do the same thing, even though he had been terrible at it, with no ear for tune at all. It had been his mother's way. "When my brother and I were little, we were - " and Father's expression would always go pensive here, "well, model children we were not. This was the only way she could get us to behave." She had not been a bad mother, Hagoromo had explained, despite her amoral doings. And besides, love did wash away so easily, no matter how much one wanted it to.

Two weeks into April the academy had a break - a celebration for the founding of the damned village. Kurama finished his first decent cake then, lemon-chocolate with buttercream frosting, star-shakes sprinkles, and halved strawberries arranged in a neat circle. The spawn managed to get his paper to stick for a whole twenty seconds without it going up in flames. He celebrated with a whoop and a weird dance, and then couldn't manage the result for the next three days afterwards. Half an hour into a wheedling sulk of, "Raaamaaaaa give me something else this is _stupid,"_ Kurama walked up a wall, across the ceiling of the living room, and then came down the opposite side. His peasely reserves spluttered. He had to sit down heavily and catch his breath, grinding his teeth at the sudden bout of dizziness, but at least the spawn stopped whining.

The spawn stopped whining, and then tried to wall-walk. He fell of course, chakra-control on the far side of abominable, but unfortunately it did not deter him in the slightest. By the end of the day there were visible dents in the plaster. Kurama chucked his (empty) notebook at fluffy blond hair, scowling, "Go outside if you're so insistent, there are trees for a reason."

"Can't get higher than two steps," mourned the spawn, coming back in time for dinner, leaves stuck in his hair and dirt under his fingernails.

Ramen was on for dinner, or, at least, the spawn's dinner. Kurama favored rice and chicken teriyaki. Also, the cake had finished its extended stay in the fridge, and now it was ready to be consumed. He jabbed his chopsticks at the opposite end of the low table. "You have to get the paper to stick for ten minutes _at least._ "

The rain finally let up near the end of April, receding for the new growth. There was a crispness to the air, sharp and sweet and green. Tangling vines of ivy inched up the eastern side of the apartment, clinging stubbornly to ashy gray brickwork.  The water drained from into the sewers, leaving dry roads. New leaves unfurled.

Visits with the monkey man still continued, every two weeks on a Sunday morning. Most of the time they went out for ramen, or Yakikinu at one of the Akimichi restaurants. Kurama watched the sizzle of meat on the grill, listening to the spawn's now familiar chatter. The Monkey-man looked at the blond head fondly, before turning onto Kurama and remarking, "You're not attending your classes."

"I don't want to," Kurama said, which was not untrue, though deep, terrible loathing was a more accurate fit of his feelings towards that subject. "And it's boring." He stuffed a slice of beef into his mouth. The sauce was sticky sweet; he swallowed. The Monkey-man made a considerate noise.

Now that the spawn was pacified, to a degree, with both the wall-walking and basic chakra-explanations (although he wasn't that pacified, they still had arguments most mornings but it was a every other day thing instead of a drag-your-twin-out-at-eight-on-the-dot-thing) there was no reason for Kurama to attend. The spawn kicked and sulked, of course, but he acknowledged the need for Kurama to do his "Super awesome jutsu research" elsewhere. The cakes helped. The lunches also helped. Eggs, fish, and rice were not a miracle of culinary experience no matter what the spawn seemed to think, but if Kurama packed him enough he took to leaving with surprising grace. (So like, a slammed door and a muffled "thanks RAMA" from half a hallway down, slurping up the last of his miso soup.)

"Would you like to be moved up a class, Menma-kun?" said Monkey-man. "I understand theoretical knowledge does not begin to be stimulating until third year." He paused. "Although your physical scores could use work, if you're truly that bored - "

_"No,_ " said Kurama, with a sort of vehement horror. The spawn had abruptly stopped eating, chopsticks hanging midway between the grill and his mouth.

"But you're not satisfied with your current classes," the Monkey-man pointed out, in a tone that said he was being very reasonable.

This was. Well. It was a conversation Kurama had anticipated to happen sometime, just not - right now. May meant the term was nearly over; he should have expected it. Kurama gritted his teeth, thought of his organized bullet point list of valid arguments, and somehow what flew out of his stupid child mouth ended up being a gritted, _"I don't want to_."

The Monkey-man did not look surprised in the slightest. Fair was fair, Kurama had not exactly been hiding it. "Be a ninja?"

"No," said Kurama. Then, in a dragged out sort of way - remember the bullet points! - "I mean yes. I want. To be a ninja." He poked at his food with his chopsticks, focusing very intently on memories of the spawn whenever he was feeling muttery or guilty about something. Scowl in place - not hard. Eyes down - so better not to look at the Monkey-man and project thoughts of slaughter; human faces were unfortunately expressionate. Chakra muted and fidgeting, which was both the easiest and the hardest. For a moment Kurama had to wrangle with it, telling it to settle down instead of flaring up. "But the Academy - There's no point. School is supposed to be a place of education and expanding interpersonal relations. Considering the teacher does not teach, and no one will get within five meters of me or the idiot, that makes the experience completely obsolete."

Mulishly, he jerked up his chin. _Remember the spawn_ , he chanted inwardly. Copying Naruto's expressions was an alarmingly easy task. but then, Kurama got exposed to them at least eight hours a day.

He caught the Monkey-man's gaze for a count of four, five... and then looked back to his plate and scuffed his feet.

Timing was _key._

Which was when the spawn rocketed in. "Yeah! And besides, Rama's smarter than all them people put together. He can _walk up walls._ "

Sitting down, he looked very pleased at himself for contributing. Kurama twitched - a barely suppressed instinct to lunge put on hold - and tried to twist his snarl into something more fitting for angered embarrassment. It didn't matter. The ANBU knew about it. It would have already been reported.

He was going to be _out of this village_  before they made something concrete out from his actions.

"Your concerns are valid, Menma-kun," said the Monkey-man. "I hope, however, should these inquiries be addressed, that you will try harder for next year's term."

Kurama did not care for shit if those concerns were addressed or not. They were valid because the Monkey-man was not an idiot. However it was spun, the Academy was not endearing itself to him anytime soon.

Inwardly, he counted to five in his head. Then he redirected the angle of his face up a few degrees, and said a grudging, "Maybe."

The Monkey-man could make what he wanted out of that.

"Wait," said the spawn, in a tone of someone finally catching on. He poked his chopsticks in the Monkey-man's direction. "You're doing somethin' bout stinky Hideki?"

The Monkey-man's gaze flickered briefly to his tea. He sighed.  "Be more respectful towards your teacher, Naruto."

Which was more or less cue for the spawn to launch himself into a diatribe on all of this Hideki's incompetencies, beginning with, "his hair is _stupid,"_ and moving onto, "he took three marks off my math test for formatting. Formatting!" The spawn was talking and chewing in the same breath, the Monkey-man nodding along and making interested noises at the right times to make him go into winding tangents. Tension had deflated like a leaky balloon.

Kurama took a careful breath in, out, and then stuffed a tender slice of rib into his mouth.

 

* * *

 

He spent a lot of time at the library.

Kurama couldn't get into the restricted sections, which, although not necessary, would have been useful. But it was a soothing place. Cozy. Quiet. It smelled of aged paper and wood and dust motes, and in the early mornings and evenings, light glittered through tall windows and gilted everything with gold.

The topics open to public consumption were still diverse. Kurama avoided the history section best as he could, after a few quick days of wary fact-checking, but no, there was no mention of the Tailed-beasts, and definitely no mention of his name. He didn't think there would've be. It had been centuries stacked upon centuries since he had last handed it out - he wasn't _Shukaku._ Even in the earlier days of the millennium, back when he was still purifying forests and helping the poor grow their crops according to his oaths, the humans called him _Lord Ninetails,_ not Kurama.

But - just to be sure. There was no reason for sloppiness when it came to security measures.

Then he put back  the mess he'd made of the history shelf, turned heel, and resolved to never return again. Humans could barely keep straight events that occurred during their lifetime, let alone what happened a few hundred years prior. Their accounts did well to prove that. By the time Kurama was done, he had a headache from how hard he was grinding his teeth.

The myths though, those were the comforting ones.

They were stacked in the children's section, two back-to-back shelves of scrolls and laminated pages. Some of them were new - _The one inch boy, Kintaro_ \- but for the most part these were stories Kurama had grown up with, no matter the changes in wording or illustration. He knew _Hanasaka Jiisan_ and _Urashima Taro_ easily and by memory, and _the Journey to the West_ called up memories of Son Goku's insufferable narration around a tall bonfire, the Monkey King having been partially modeled after him.

Kurama was halfway through a rendition of _The tale of the Bamboo cutter_ when: the blaze of a familiar chakra signature, the scuff of worn sandals on wood.

"What?" he asked, without looking up. A weight thumped down next to him. Mixed into the aged wood came the scent of mud and something sharply acrid - some kind of glue. Kurama dearly hoped that the spawn wouldn't be covered in glitter again. Juvenile pranks were juvenile, and also, glitter took forever to clean out.

Nothing," muttered the spawn moodily.

"Hmm," said Kurama.

He glanced at him from the corner of his eye. No glitter, but his shoulders were hunched, his knees propped up to his chest. He was picking dirt out from beneath his fingernails with a look of intense concentration. Mouth set into tight, straight line. Chakra prickled along Kurama's scald, an unhappy cloud.

It took maybe ten seconds of silence before the spawn broke.

"Genkai," he said lowly. Kurama had no idea who that was. "He -he had a birthday party today. He brought cupcakes. Like, the sprinkles ones, with the chocolate icing." Here he picked up speed, words rushing over one another. "And I only got one when everyone else got two, and I already glued Genkai's and Stinky Hideki's textbooks  _shut_  cuz they were being dumb and mean, and it's so - "He shut his mouth with a clack. His shoulders drew in closer, teeth worrying his lower lip, brows drawn, and abruptly said. "His ma and pa picked him up afterwards. By the front gates. And his ma had this big-ass cake under her arm and it was so  _pretty_  with flowers and  _everything_  and he came back with these enve-en -  _envelopes_  and handed them out to everyone in our class  _but_  me and said everyone could come to his party this Saturday and I asked, _"where's mine then_ " and he said he ain't allowed to play with me no more  and I  _never_  get one and it doesn't matter much when its girls cuz they never invite other people anyways but _Yuzu had one in February and Kosuke had one last month and_ _whydoInevergeton_ _e -"_

He was redfaced and gasping, hands digging into the fabric of his shorts. Thin shoulders heaved another breath. The spawn opened his mouth to barrel on, managed only an incomprehensible wheeze-squeak of outrage, and then thunked his head back against the bookshelf.

Very slowly, Kurama put down his book. This was neither a situation he was equipped for, or really cared about, or wanted to deal with.

The spawn's throat bobbed.

He made - a noise. A hitching kind of noise. The kind people got when they were trying to breathe through a clogged nose. The knuckles of his hands were white, not quite trembling from how hard they were clenched. And _Urggh,_ Kurama knew those signs. The spawn was staring up resolutely. He always did when he was like this, as if he tried hard enough the ceiling would hide his tears or the sun would burn them away.

"I make you cake," Kurama said. _Do not cry,_ he tried to communicate with force of sheer willpower.

"It's not the same," the spawn said miserably.

"My cake is better than their cake," Kurama tried.

"It's not the  _same._ " the spawn repeated. "It's not - no one eats -" he puffed his cheeks. His voice only wavered a little, thin and shaky and stubborn. "They have  _parties_."

Kurama looked at the floor beneath his feet, trying to figure out exactly where this was going. "You have parties too."

"Three people ain't a  _party_."

"And... That's why you're throwing yourself into a stupid sulk?"

"No," the spawn said, in a tone that clearly stated  _yes._

"Uh Huh," Kurama muttered.

The span made a frustrated noise.  "No - I mean." He faltered. He still hadn't turned, staring at the ceiling with fixed eyes. "I hate - I don't get why everyone else -I don't get -" and then finally burst out unhappily, "i _t's not fair."_

 Kurama could have laughed. "It never is."

He didn't actually know what happened. One moment there was -chakra. Chakra that sizzled with a crack under the spawn's skin. The next Kurama had his shoulders seized in a grip that wrenched and the spawn was shouting into his face like a crazy person. " _Not like this it isn't_!" His voice cracked on the first syllable, breaking like thin ice. His mouth was screwed sideways in a trembling line. Kurama stared at him. "There are - _there are others_. Other orphans. Five of 'em in my class!  - Kiyo an' Nao an' Kazuki and - _and -_ and none of _them_ get ignored by the adults and all of _them_ got into stupid Genkai's party and even if they don't have parents _-_ _even if -_ even when don't have someone who's supposed to love'em _-_ _"_ His voice rasped, gone hoarse now, and then he took in a breath that whistled through his teeth and said, very quietly, "We don't have a mom and dad."

Slowly, the hands on Kurama's shoulders unclenched. The spawn leaned against the back shelf like a puppet with strings cut, visibly deflating.

He repeated, too small sounding, "We don't have a mom or dad."

Kurama closed his eyes. _How was this his job._ "You have parents."

"No we don't," the spawn mumbled.

"You  _had_  parents."

"No we didn't."

"You did," Kurama said flaty.

He would give a lot for Uzumaki Kushina and Namikaze Minato to have never existed - but the fact stood. "That's how human reproduction _works._ "

In the black of his eyelids the images rose, unbidden. October tenth and the spidery webbings of Namikaze's seals, running ink lines down Kurama's flank. Kushina and twenty years chained. Bad enough Namikaze's stupid face was stuck on that mountain. Bad enough they called him  _Uzumaki Menma._

He felt the spawn twitch.

"Nu-uh," he said, voice stubborn.

"Yes."

" _Nu-uh._ "

"I'm not playing this game," Kurama said warningly.

_**"Nuh-uh**_ ," the spawn said, and Kurama was about to shove him back in a fit of temper when he wrenched himself onto his feet first. Shoulders back. Feet planted. He loomed, as much as a too-skinny five with a trembling mouth and not-quite held back tears could. "No we  _didn't!"_ His face was drawn in fury. "If we did the where are they!  _Did they not want us too?_ " 

And Kurama -

For a moment there was only October tenth.

Namikaze one blonde streak in a burning night, two hand-seals away from summoning the Shinigami. Kushina saying, " _And you will never be allowed free."_  Years and years ago, her eyes had blazed just like this, an image superimposed, and before he could stop himself, Kurama's mouth was spitting out a sharp-edged, vicious, " _dead_."

Both of them stopped talking at the same time.

"What?" the spawn blinked. A tear dislodged itself and slipped down his cheek, but his tone was bewildered instead of furious. Then his eyes narrowed. "And how do  _you_  know?"

_Because I was there,_  Kurama did not say. He tightened his grip on his book. The anger was doing fuzzy things to his head. It wasn't productive. The disconnect between the neurons of his five-year-old garbage shell had  _already_  made him out something that definitely didn't need to be outed. He didn't need to add on something like, "Of course they're dead. It's why  _you're_  alive. Exactly what do you think happened on  _October tenth_  -"

Kurama bit down  _hard_  on his own tongue.

Too late. "What? What do you mean what happened. That's our birthday ain't it?"

"No," said Kurama, whose mouth was still moving without his permission. He wrangled the consonants around. " _Yes._  Aggh - _Fuck._  I am going to _shut up._ As will you. We will both shut up now."

"What? No!" the spawn squawked, somehow, despite the snotty-hoarse pitch his voice was attempting to reach. "What happened! Tell me!"

Kurama felt his teeth grind from the force it took to keep his mouth shut.

The spawn reached over and fisted his hands into the front of Kurama's shirt. And _shook_ him. "Tell me!" he shouted, bewilderment wiped straight away for outrage _,_ and Kurama wrenched the spawn's grip off by the wrist and said, barely restrained, " _What does it matter._ _They're dead anyways!"_

"I don't care!" the spawn yelled. "I don't care if they're dead. I don't care if they didn't want us. _I don't care I don't care I don't care!_  If you know somethng you have to tell me, _you have to_  - Our parents. I  _need_ to -  _mmph_

"Shut up shut up _shut up_!" Kurama snarled.

A hand over the spawn's mouth. Teeth biting the inside of his own cheek. Fucking words. Fucking spawn. His heart thumped wildly in his chest and all Kurama could feel beyond the rage was a kind of terrible panic, senses wildly combing through to find -

No ANBU in the library present. None inside, at least. The children's area, deserted. The entire back of the library empty but for a few bare flickers. No witnesses.

Well, apart from the librarian. The librarian had likely heard everything.

The spawn jammed an elbow into his ribs. "MMRGHHH- " and he jerked back, enough time for the spawn to lever himself out and barrel on. " _Something_  important went on October tentg and you can  _won't tell me wh_ a - "

"The Kyuubi attacked," Kurama hissed.

The words felt like dragging concrete out from the filing of his teeth.

But they served their intended response well, because finally, finally, the spawn shut the hell up. 

He smiled grimly, a tight pale slash of his mouth - Kurama  _never_ smiled -and watched the spawn give a minute flinch. "October tenth. Six years ago. The Kyuubi attacked.  _This village has a festival for a reason, nitwit._ " And every instinct in his bones were screaming _wrong wrong wrong_ what are you doing - It was too many cards on his table flipped over. Five years here though, had taught Kurama that sometimes it was really best not to listen to his instincts. He needed to be rational. Logical. it was also either this or the spawn running around screaming at the top of his stupid lungs demanding an answer a _ny_  answer, and Kurama could in no way have that.  "Your parents died, and they sealed the fox into us."

The chances of anyone actually telling the spawn was slim. Whatever law they had in place worked to Kurama's advantage. But if the Monkey-man finally decided to act and gave the spawn the truth - the parts of the truth that humans thought they knew - or worse, about  Namikaze and  _Kushina,_  that could prove actively disastrous. Better give it himself, in bits and pieces that he could regulate.

He was  _never supposed to have known in the first place._ Fucking five year old mouth. Kurama smiled, a baring of teeth, a snarl.

The spawn stared at him. His hands loosened from the front of Kurama's shirt.

"The Fourth - the fourth killed the fox," he said.

Kurama didn't laugh; it was a close thing. "The fourth could have  _tried_." and the words came out too angry, tripping over themselves, a damn that shouldn't have broke fracturing. "Tailed beasts are  _chakra constructs._ They can't  _be_  killed. So he did he next best thing and  _split the fox into two and sealed him_." He remembered: the blur of the buildings, the sharpripping of essence. He should have killed Uzumaki Kushina first but then where would that had left him, sealed in the Shinigami's stomach for an eternity?

"That ain't," the spawn started, and stumbled. His face had gone white, eyes huge. He wasn't shouting anymore.

Paper bent, the spine creaked alarmingly in Kurama's grip. A deep breath in, and he grappled furiously with his temper. "What do you mean  _it ain't_.  _You were the one that wanted to know."_

"That can't -"

Kurama placed one hand on the arm halfway to his shirt, gripping it hard. _Get off._ "So, why, pray tell, do you think everyone looks at you like _that_."

 "I -" his voice was small, frightened. He opened his mouth. No noise came out. He closed it.

He stared at Kurama, utterly still.

Finally, he edged, "It... it killed people. The fox."

"Yes."

The spawn flinched, a full body shudder, and he finally tore his eyes away from Kurama to stare down at his hands. The nails were bitten, the underneath dirt-crusted.

Very quietly, he asked, "Did we... kill people.?"

Kurama squinted at him. "No."

Gaze fixed down, the spawn said, a bare wisping rasp, "But... we're the fox?"

"What." said Kurama.

... the hell?

And then facts connected, neurons fired, and he made a disgusted noise. "How did you even get that from -  I said he  _sealed_  the fox. Not he magically turned the fox into tiny humans." That was all Kushina, and Kurama needed to  _stop talkin_ g before he gave away any more ideas. "Chakra..." well, it wasn't like this wasn't common enough knowledge, "can be sealed. He  _sealed_  the fox.

That was not quite a truth.

"Then we're not the fox?" the spawn said, hopefully, like a question. As if Kurama could have misheard him.

"No," Kurama grunted.

"But we have... The fox in us?" He asked anxiously.

"Like an egg in pork ramen," Kurama said grimly.

"Oh." His chakra wavered, going from misty hope back to shell-shocked downcast. His voice wavered at the edges. "Oh that's why - the adults?"

"Hmm."

"Oh," he said again, in a very small tone. "That's - ." Then his head jerked up, taunt. "Wait. Why - What 'bout - the Old Man." he faltered. The column of his throat bobbed, a hard swallow. "If  _everyone_  knows than the Old Man Hokage - "

Flatly, Kurama filled in, "Definitely does too.  _Obviously_."

The spawn looked at Kurama as if he could turn back time so the past ten minutes of conversation never happened, pale and stricken. "He didn't. Why didn't he tell us?"

Kurama could not even remotely read the Monkey-man's mind.  "Why the bloody hell would I know?"

"You know everything," said the spawn. Not even a hesitance, as if this was a fact grounded in the same way as:  _the sky is blue_  or  _Earth orbits the sun._  Kurama stared at him. The spawn continued with a desperate, "or - or the Old Man Teuchi, or Dog, or just. Anyone." He went quiet. Under his breath, he muttered, so small it barely escaped his teeth,  _"No one told us,"_ and his chakra shivered and closed in on itself, shaking as he twisted his hands together.

Kurama could turn this to his advantage. 

"There's. A law." He eyed the spawn. "No one who knows is supposed to tell anyone else. It's punishable -" now, slowly, forcefully, because he needed for this to go through the spawn's thick skull. He'd already strewn his options into dissaray and there was  _no way_  the spawn could be allowed to go running to the Monkey-man or anyone else that could possibly report to him, which was  _everyone._ "by execution."

Kurama actually had no idea what it was punishable by. He'd seen executions though. They were both kinder and harder than the trenches. Ninjas seemed to be fond of them.

"... oh," said the spawn looked up at him with too-huge eyes.

" _So don't tell anyone."_

The spawn continued to stare. One, two, five, eight seconds...

And then his fists _balled_.

Kurama had been fairly certain what the spawn's reaction would be, but violence was - well, not that high on the last. Apprehension lasted two seconds, and then he could barely breathe past the arms locked in a chokehold around his neck, the jutting point of a nose in his collarbone. "I won't let'em," the spawn was saying, voice choked and  _angry,_ "I won't let'em _I won't let them."_ Kurama could hear the frantic thump of his heartbeat, the trembling of stick arms around his back. Wet seeped down the front of his shirt, hot and tickling. He wheezed, tried and  couldn't even managed out a mangled "what?" from the pressure on his windpipe. Where exactly did this come from-  _what in Father's name_. The spawn was babbling, _"You ain't allowed and that won't ever ever never gonna ever happen - "_   and Kurama turned his own words over in his head.

Saying  " _No one who knows is supposed to tell anyone else."_

Saying, " _It's punishable by execution."_

And Kurama had done just that - told.

"Not ever." And the spawn's eyes were wild, red-rimmed, the blue smeared, running wet, grip tight enough to bruise on Kurama's shoulders as he snarled,  _ **"I won't let them."**_

 

 

* * *

 

Eventually, the spawn calmed.

The tears stopped. Unsalvageably, the front of Kurama's shirt was a mess of snot and tears and crumpled manhandling. He was holding onto Kurama's wrist. His hands were bigger, finger and thumb nearly encircling the entirety. He hadn't let go since the last bit of verbal communication had gone out for a mess of alternatively crying and enraged clawing noises. Kurama had no idea what to do about that, so he didn't. There was maybe some awkward patting.

Now at least the spawn had words back, though raspy. "Whatcha reading?" he muttered.

Kurama wordlessly waved the cover. Blearily, the spawn blinked, and then he squinted. "Ka-Kaguya-hime?" he read, poking the laminated picture of a long haired woman cradled in the curve of a crescent moon. "I thought you were still on the monkey one."

"I'm done the Journey to the West," Kurama said.

The spawn sniffled and then rubbed at his nose. It was a raw, bright red; he came away with snot on his sleeve. "Really? I liked that one."

"You and everyone else."

The silence stretched. Kurama categorized chakra signatures. ANBU on the roofs. A few lurkers in the higher sections. Librarian that had likely heard nearly everything, though Kurama had been quiet as he could. Hopefully this could pass as a normal spat instead of.... what it was. The spawn's head rolled heavily against his shoulder, the weight almost familiar. He smelled of mud and tear-salt and adrenaline and wind-fire. His breath tickled Kurama's jaw.

"Hey," said the spawn.

Kurama made an effort not to move. He felt more exhausted than he should have."Yes?"

"Read to me?"

"Why?"

The grip on his wrist tightened. "Because."

Kurama looked down at them, the fingers. Pink nails. Pink hands. They looked like scallop shells or mountain granite, the type Father used to carve mandalas from. He had used such careful motions when he was carving. The quiet s _ch-sheek_ of his knife. When Ashura and Indra were small he gave them these trinkets of focus, pressing into pink soft hands, and they would grip it tightly, fingers wrapped around the smooth stone, clutching it a grip reserved for precious, delicate things.

"Fine," Kurama said, and opened the book.

He started from the beginning.

"... _Long, long ago, there lived an old bamboo wood-cutter. He was very poor and sad also, for no child had Heaven sent to cheer his old age, and in his heart there was no hope of rest from work till he died and was laid in the quiet grave. Every morning he went forth into the woods and hills wherever the bamboo reared its lithe green plumes against the sky..."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. So it had to happen sometime.  
> 2\. Still like... 20k worth of set up to go. 
> 
> The past three weeks have been a whirlwind of exams, moving, and then my new job. I've gotten my schedule figured out now, so hopefully I'll be up to my usual once-a-week update schedule again soon. Thank you for your patience everyone! If there's anything you liked, leave a review on your way out!
> 
> Edit: 07/08 - sort of partially new version of this chapter up. This is why I should edit before hand, I guess.


	9. Uchiha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Sasuke and Itachi.

The end of June marked the completion of the school term, and thus the entire Academy building full of screaming children was let out into summer. Evidently, this included the spawn. He came back on the half-day with his report-card already ripped open, the sheet marked with two probably very grudging Excellents, then gradually degrading down to Satisfactory for Self-regulation. He wasn't very miffed about it though; apparently, he'd already superglued glitter to the teacher's desk before he'd left. 

 

Their routine for the summer was not much different than when the school year was in. The spawn still went scampering out during the day, albeit later than eight in the morning. He wolfed down two litres of ice-cream along with whatever breakfast he was having, and then gave a loud whoop and and a declaration that he was " _gonna get to the top of the tree today for sure, just you watch Rama."_ Three months after the first demonstration, and he could now inch up five meters of vertical surface at a time. Kurama was not sure what the average human development was for chakra control, but by Father the spawn's was slow.

Meanwhile, Kurama worked on the seal.

He did it at the kitchen table, usually after the spawn left. It was a place that provided ambient light when not in direct line of any windows. Barring Dog-brat, Kurama's ANBU guards always stuck themselves a good rooftop and a half away at all times, which, though not a great surveillance strategy, worked in his favour. Also, only idiots that wanted to be caught or exploded did fine-tune finangling in the dead of night.

The seal looped and twisted and _trapeize_ d across itself, and was not working with Kurama in the slightest.

Of course it didn't. Uzumaki Kushina had made it. Why should he have expected otherwise.

In any case, one too-shining Thursday morning had Kurama _finally_ managing to narrow and isolate the base elements. He drew out the simplified seal on a blank sheet of paper carefully, first in pencil and then an outline in good waterproof ink. It was where the key should be hidden the bottom layers, and with the key came the ability rip the seal straight open.

At least, in theory.

In practice finding the key was a headache. It was _such_ a damned headache. He wasn't Shukaku and he wasn't even Matatabi; Kurama's sealing knowledge had been stuck in the back shelves for about two thousand years without a good dusting, from lessons he'd only paid half an ear to. His first few months after getting the necessary privacy had just been refresher courses for the fundamentals. Thankfully his memories were, well, chakra-imprints. Not fragile, pesky, human electricity and brain fluid.

He remembered enough.

Uzumaki Kushina's seal was still a nightmare.

"I hate you," Kurama informed it, squinting furiously. Everything was tangled. He tried to rework the nexus of connecting points in a way that didn't either explode, fracture dangerously or alert everyone within twenty miles with a chakra spike like a blaring klaxon. He failed. "I loathe you absolutely and irreversibly. _Why do you exist_."

The page did not reply. Kurama munched on a spoonful of gloopy ice-cream, crunching frozen oreo pieces between his teeth. He tried to unravel what looked like the main intersection for the sigils of binding, a squashed oval filled with connectors and limiters that nudged against one another for space. His pencil drilled a hole in the rice-paper.

And he had another seal to work on too: the spawn's. Which he hadn't even looked at yet. Which, considering its creator, was going to be bloody complicated.

At least that dratted Namikaze's pieces tended to be _clean._

* * *

 "You need _fresh air_."

On the first of August, the spawn swooped in during a moment of bleary-eyed, nap-deprived weakness. Kurama was dragged down the stairs and out the back door of his apartment builidng before he even registered what was happening. The roads were still damp from the short rain shower of earlier. The trees printed green reflections on the puddles. The spawn propelled them down three back alleyways and the main road until they arrived at a park, where Kurama immediately trudged his way to a shaded grove, shoved his hat floppy hat lower over his eyes, and curled up on the wet grass.

The spawn gave him a deeply judgmental look. It was kind of squinty. He nudged Kurama's elbow with a sandaled toe.

"Mrrgh," said Kurama. His _notes_. What even. He'd had to stash them underneath t _he sink._

Apparently, getting Kurama outside was enough of a victory for ten minutes, because the spawn said, "Fine, poopy-pants," in a frowning kind of voice. "But we're gonna go on the swings later." He fixed Kurama's hat and kind of patted it, and Kurama made a sort of _"Urrgh,"_  noise in response. Then he was off.

Two minutes or maybe two hours later, there was a spike of chakra, hot and angry, and Kurama jerked awake.

"YOU'RE THE DUMBO!" Came the spawn's enraged howl from the sandbox. Kurama tried to sit up, banged his head against the trunk of a tree, and proceeded to clutch at his forehead miserably.

Chakra flared.

It came from the spawn's direction. Soft. _Softer_ , at least, than the volcanic eruption that was half of Kurama's red, half of Kushina's blue. And small. Just a spark of a flame flickering in a child's undeveloped coils. Kurama frowned. It felt... familiar.

Very, unnervingly familiar.

It tasted of ashes and candle-light. The dwindling of a bonfire and the long shadows it cast.

Uchiha.

_Of all the people the spawn could have chosen to scream_ at - Well. Actually, the spawn screamed at everyone, or at least talked very loudly to everyone, so it wasn't much of a standard.

As if demonstrating this exact point, the spawn howled. "You take that BACK!"

Grimacing, Kurama raised his head. He squinted.

In the distance, there was a spill of bright candies on the ground, and a crinkled orange package Kurama recognised from Dog-brat's weekly sweet deliveries. The spawn's arms windmilled furiously. In front of him, stood a boy with black hair and a face flushed red with indignation. It was - a brat. Larval-staged. A _Uchiha_ brat. He said something huffy back, voice pitched in that high-child tone with his arms crossed across his chest and his expression like that of a badly poked cat. The red of his family fan was a vivid, tiny half-moon on his back.

Kurama stood up, shoved his hat so that it didn't block his line of vision, and got to the damage site just as the Uchiha boy's chakra crescendoed from irritation into a white-hot wave of rage. Only deeply ingrained manners, it seemed, were keeping him from screaming back at the spawn, at equal volume. The two of them were near same shade of red.

The spawn was still screeching. The Uchiha boy scowled and poked a finger in his direction, turning up his nose with a _hmmph_. "It's not my fault if you're too stupid to admit it," he said imperiously, and his enunciation was about three times better than the spawn's own whenever the blond devolved into a incensed mess.

The spawn did a spasming thing with his hands that said he wanted dearly wanted to strangle.

Kurama approved. Unfortunately, approving didn't mean allowing. 

Before he could act, Kurama snaked forward, caught the back of the spawn's collar and _yanked,_ releasing him when he tumbled onto the grass with a yowl. He had done an excellent job avoiding those dratted genjutsu eyes these past few years - and vice-versa too. That was how it should be. The last Kurama needed was _attention._  And this one was still young and innocuous. Chakra nothing but a bare whisper beneath the skin and without the claret eyes that defined his kind.  He was easily dealt with. Virtually harmless. Now if they could leave before-

"Sasuke?" said a voice, not quite cracking puberty but deeper than the Uchiha's boy's drawl. Kurama jerked up the same moment the spawn did. He swatted Kurama's hands away from his collar, just as a very young... _person_ flickered into view with a swirl of leaves, juggling a paper plate of rice balls in one hand.

Kurama thought it was a boy. All human faces looked the same and it wasn't as if chakra cared for gender technicalities. Except this boy had long hair, so maybe it was a girl instead.

He reached out.

Ash and smoke and mirrors. He felt the dark curtains of chakra snap tightly shut and knew instantly: this one was dangerous. This one held the sharingan.

They needed to leave.

Right now.

The spawn flailed a hand into Kurama's face and leaped back to his feet, pointing an accusing finger at Smoke-and-mirrors. His chakra prickled."Who're _you_!" he exclaimed.

There was a long, slow, blink. Faintly, the edges of Uchiha-senior's is lips lifted into a smile, and he looked ready to respond when the larval-staged one jumped in between the two of them, scowling.

"That's my older brother you're talking to!"

So it was a boy after all.

"Sasuke-" Smoke-and-Mirrors began, amused now.

The spawn snagged the end of Kurama's sleeve and hauled him forwards. "Well this," he said, waving a hand in Kurama's direction as if showcasing him. "Is _my_ older brother." He sounded halfway between miffed and proud as he said this, and then patted Kurama on the shoulder. Kurama twitched.

The Uchiha brat considered him. He did not look impressed. "Mine is better than yours."

He turned, looking up for conformation. Smoke-and-mirrors smiled. The Uchiha brat's snooty looking face crumpled into something so intently adoring it made Kurama want to shrivel into a ball.

Then Smoke-and-Mirrors poked Uchiha-brat in the forehead, and his expression morphed back into indignation. "Nii-san!"

"Be nice, Sasuke."

He looked up with great and terrible betrayal written in his eyes.  "Nii-san, He called my hair a _duck-but_ t."

"Because it looks like a duck-butt!" the spawn gestured wildly. "See! It's all puffy and spiky and weird at the back"

The faintest trace of a flush spread on the Uchiha-brat's face, ears to cheeks. "Itachi..." He glanced sideways, and then went an even deeper red in mortification."Don't _laugh_."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Smoke-and-Mirrors assured. His shoulders trembled. His chakra trembled as well, an earth-quaky shake that said he was laughing anyway. With puffed cheeks and crossed arms, Uchiha-brat turned his head away.

Which gave the spawn just enough of an opportunity to ask:

"Are you sure you're a guy?" He squinted at Smoke-and-Mirrors. "I mean your hair's _really_ long and pretty."

"Thank you Naruto-kun."

Uchiha-brat's attention snapped to the spawn again. "Of course he's a guy! What about _your_ brother."

And then he reached one hand forward and  _tugged_ at Kurama's hair.

The sting of it to his scalp was quick and startling. Kurama had one hand reaching out to slap the intrusion away before the feeling even completely registered, teeth bared in a snarl. He felt his palm meet air; the shithead of a brat had _dodged_.

_"Oi,_ " squawked the spawn, and then lunged forward to punch Uchiha-brat in the face.

The scuffle was quick. The spawn punched. The Uchiha-brat ducked, movements swift and precise as he went low and then sprung forward. Someone tried to headbutt someone else. It didn't connect.

Mainly because the two of them were suddenly dangling a feet from the ground, collars up to their chins, snagged mid-air and looking bewildered by the abrupt change.

Smoke-and-Mirrors regardes with coal eyes.

The Uchiha-brat looked at himself, looked sideways at the spawn, and seemed to register something. "... I was protecting your honor Nii-san!" he said valiantly.

"Honor my arse," growled Kurama, smoothing down his hair. 

Smoke-and-mirrors raised one repressive eyebrow. "Sasuke," he said, tone firm, and suddenly the Uchiha brat seemed to find the ground terribly, completely engrossing. "Mother did not teach us to be rude."

The Uchiha-brat scowled, shoulders drawing in, cheeks ruddy, and then one very grass-stained hand floundered in the blond's direction.

"But he started it!"

"You called me a stupid-head-that-can't-see-straight stupid head and killed my candy!" yelled the spawn.

"You called my brother a girl!" shouted the Uchiha brat.

The spawn raised one accusing finger. "You called _my_ brother a girl!"

"Well he does look like a girl!"

"So what! He's still better than yours."

Kurama turned onto the spawn. "Are you saying I look like a girl?"

Which, well Kurama didn't particularly care either way. He was a _Tailed-Beast._ What was more important was the reminder, like the red hair and violet eyes and the foreign, olive skin. Uzumaki Kushina.

The spawn paused, blinked at him. Then, because he had no tact whatsoever, opened his mouth and said, "You kind of do."

"See!" said Uchiha-brat.

Kurama debated chucking a rock at him. "Whose side are you on?"

"Yours, duh," the spawn said. Kurama gave him a flat look, and he defended, in a way that did not really help himself, "But you are kinda girly! Not as girly as duckbutt's brother, but still suuuper girly. But he's girlier! See! Shiny hair. And uh, I think maybe those eyelashes are fake." He looked contemplatively at Smoke-and-Mirrors for a moment, squinting. "Yeah, probably fake."

"They're not fake!" said Uchiha-brat, sounding equal parts outraged and mortified. "You're just ugly!"

"Your face is ugly!"

"Sasuke. Uzumaki-san -" sighed Smoke-and-Mirrors.

"Well you _suck,_ " said the spawn right over him, rallying with what was apparently the best insult he could think of.

"Uzumaki-san - "

"Who tries to hit someone over _one packet of candy_ _you stupid dumbo_ ," barreled Uchiha brat, also right over Smoke-and-mirrors.

"Sasuke -"

"Me!" bellowed the spawn.

Smoke-and-mirrors let go, gravity reasserted its hold, and there were twin identical thumps as both the spawn and Uchiha-brat smacked the ground at the same time.

" _Urk_."

Pained whining rose. The little shits, like that actually hurt - Kurama knew first-hand the spawn could go ricocheting across walls head-first and come out of it looking like he'd just had the time of his life - this was a foot and a half drop at _most._ The spawn shook grass out of his hair. Uchiha brat hauled himself onto his elbows. Very levelly, Smoke-and-mirrors said, "I believe there is a way to resolve this _without_ name-calling. Sasuke, Uzumaki-san, if you could - " only for the spawn to launch himself forward in a head-butt.

They went down in yowling heap of black and orange and blond hair.

Smoke-and-mirrors sighed.

"I am going to guess that proper apologies are out then," he said. Both the spawn and the Uchiha brat - the spawn with his hands clenched in he Uchiha-brat's collar, the Uchiha brat prying the spawn's mouth open - paused. They looked at him as if he were a crazy person at the word  _apology_ , the spawn tilting his head up from its awkward angle in the dirt to squint judgmentally. 

Smoke-and-mirrors made a considering noise. He did not seem at all put out. 

Then, slowly and deliberately: "We were going to go for ice-cream afterwards. Since Sasuke did spill your sweets, would you like to come, Uzumaki-San?"

"Huh?" Muffled the spawn.

"What! Nii-San!" Cried Uchiha-brat, momentarily halting in his attempt to grind the spawn's face into dirt.

" _No_ ," said Kurama, with emphasis.

Smoke-and-mirrors didn't even blink. He started counterclockwise, starting with his miniature. "Are you going to apologize Sasuke?" He asked, and Uchiha-brat made a noise like a boiling tea-kettle. That was a clear no. He went on to address the spawn. "There is a new ice-cream place opened in the Akimichi sector. I was asking if you would like to come Uzumaki-kun, as compensation."

"Ice-cream?" Hedged the spawn, who went after offered food like rats did cheese.

" _No_ ," repeated Kurama.

"There are many excellent flavours," said Smoke-and-mirrors.

There was no fucking way Kurama was going anywhere with any Uchiha, ever. There was only one route of action here and that route was: _moving the opposite direction._

Kurama looked into coal eyes. So dark the pupil and Iris were indistinguishable. Slanted and solemn in a pale, angular face, and for one brief flash of a hallucinatory moment saw the black bleed pinwheels on a scarlet backdrop.

He felt his nails dig deep into the meat of his palms.

He breathed in.

Slowly, slowly he unclenched his hands.

"We're going home," he told the spawn, flat and hard.

The spawn - _who wasn't looking at him_. Blue eyes were zeroed in on the way Uchiha-brat's expression was twisted into horrified outrage. In a tone of morbid curiosity, he asked, "Ne ne, like, by the barbecue place?"

"Yes," said Smoke-and-mirrors.

 Uchiha-brat blindly smacked a hand in the direction of the spawn's face. He didn't hit, mainly because his attention was glued elsewhere. "Nii-San. You can't. We can't bring _them_."

"We're going _home_ ," hissed Kurama, and took two sharp steps forward to grab the spawn back by the collar.

The spawn dodged.

Right foot slid backwards, left foot stepping to the side for counterbalance. He tugged Kurama's wrist into a clumsy hold, eyes sparkling. When he grinned it was with a five-year-old's "I have one-upped you" expression, which Uchiha-brat promptly returned with a look of absolute disgust. The spawn turned to Smoke-and-Mirrors. "Yeah! Sure! Awesom _-urrgh._ "

Very pointedly, Kurama increased the pressure he had grinding down on the spawn's toes.

" _Rama!"_  he whined.

Kurama ground down _harder_.  

Smoke-and-mirrors regarded them solemnly. "I will expect the best behavior from all three of you," he said. Which - _hah._ Uchiha-brat fumed. Smoke-and-Mirror's chakra did a thing that would have translated into an eye roll for anyone else, and he leaned over to gently poked a finger into his little brother's forehead.

_"Itachi!"_

* * *

Ten minutes, one major intersection later, the spawn was carolling. 

"It's here! Over here! I know the way follow me come'on guys it ain't far now -" 

Uchiha-brat shoved an elbow sideways.

"No. Turn _left_ you dumbo. Where do you think you're going? Or - never mind. That way is good. Get lost."

A hand was determined clinging to Kurama's shoulder, and every skip felt like his arm was about to be wrenched out of its socket. "Let me go you empty-headed, blond - _urk_!"

The spawn tugged him close and slung an arm around his neck. "Rama we're going to get ice-cream," he said rapturously. "What flavour do you want. I want chocolate."

" _Die_."

"Language, Uzumaki-San," said Smoke-and-Mirrors. 

* * *

 

Somehow, eventually, Kurama found himself sitting in the vinyl booths of Shouzo's Ice-cream parlour.

The windows were wide and airy. The paint was fresh on the walls, the seats uncracked. The air smelled of milk and warm, burnt sugar. Kurama stared down at the matcha amitsu set temptingly in front of him - green bean icecream, shaved ice,  little melon balls tucked neatly to the side - and then glanced up. The spawn was noisily devouring a sundae. The Uchiha-brat was sullenly poking at a a bowl of cookies drowned in mint-chocolate. Smoke-and-mirrors sipped tea and ate ricballs.

"What the hell," he said.

Kurama remembered a lot of arguing, and then the spawn steering him _by the arm._  He didn't really remember where the route to the ice-cream shop had gone, just entering it.

And then ice-cream.

Just Voila. Poof. Somehow. He snuck a glance behind the counter. The big-shouldered, sturdy looking woman with Akimichi clan markings on both cheeks looked entirely too happy and proud of herself.

Silver flashed.

Kurama batted the spawn's hand away, along with the offending spoon poised to steal Kurama's ice-cream. What the hell or not, ice-cream was ice-cream. Period. He spawn made a wheedling sound and puffed his cheeks. Kurama levelled him an unimpressed look, stuck his own spoon into the untouched swirl of matcha, and bit down on the sweet-cold.

"Fiiine," said the spawn, and subsided.

They ate, quietly. Kurama eyed the clock at the back wall and tried to calculate how quickly he could stuff his face and immediately after _leave._

Of course, the spawn was never content to be quiet for long. Or even three minutes.

"When I grow up." He waved his spoon in the air for emphasis. There was cream staining the corners of his mouth, sticky and chocolate. "I, Uzumaki Naruto, am gonna be Hokage. And everyone's gonna _cheer_."

"You need to be a _ninja_ to be Hokage," Uchiha-brat told him, unimpressed. He broke off a bit of cookie dough with his fingers and crunched.

"Exactly! I'm going into second year once the summer goes away. The teachers are all stupid though."

Uchiha-brat paused mid-dip. The cookie tinkled to the bottom of the bowl. "You must be _old._ " He said, like an accusation, eyes narrowed.

"I'm six," the spawn corrected. "And I'm going to be _awesome."_

"The academy doesn't start _until_ you're six, dumbass."

The spawn flicked a bit of chocolate foam, catching Uchiha-brat across the cheek. He scowled, a little bow of the mouth. "Well it was _five_  for me. The Old Man Hokage said so! You're just jealous because you're not special enough to get in.

"At least lie _right._ "

Smoke-and-Mirrors fished the cookie out of the sundae; it was soggy and flaking, the black of the oreo thick with milk. "Uzumaki-san is going into second year," he interjected, biting down with impeccable manners. "It was an... allowance."

Uchiha-brat whirled, elbow knocking against the table." How did _you_ get in? Not even nii-san got in early!"

"I told you I'm _awesome_."

"Maybe when you can actually do long division properly," Kurama muttered. He scooped another teetering spoonful of cream into his mouth. Red bean this time. Huh.

For all two seconds, Uchiha brat seemed to mull over this. I'm still better," he said, once the moment was over. 

"What do you mean you're better. I'm in second year! I bet you're not even in the academy yet!"

"I'm starting this semester!"

"So you're not. You're late duck-butt! I win!"

"You couldn't even do the standard combat form!"

The spawn brandished his argument like a human battering ram. "And you're _late_!"

With his eyes slanted angrily, mouth pressed into a hard, thin line, Uchiha-brat looked like a cat poked one too many times with a sharpened stick. "Well I bet I can _still_ do better than you!"

The spawn's spoon slammed down into the remainder of the ice-cream. Glass tinkled. Kurama swooped over and stealthily ferreted away the white chocolate coin pressed against the bowl's bottom. "You're _on_. And when I win you're gonna admit I'm best. AND I'm gonna dye your hair pink _and_ you're gonna give me the biggest-ice cream parfait on the menu!"

"When _I_ win," Uchiha-brat muttered. " _You_ are going to do whatever I say for a _week_."

"Friendly competition is always good," Smoke-and-mirrors said, serene with an air of quiet bamboo gardens and traditional tea ceremonies and perfect zen.

Kurama ate his ice-cream, eying them all judgmentally.

At least it was mildly entertaining.

They were still glaring daggers at each other when the rest of the food was finally polished off. Kurama shoved the giant parfait bowl onto the glass counter to the Akimichi before turning back to where the spawn and Uchiha-brat were engaged in a heated game of "name the major historical events" with Smoke-and-mirrors playing referee. The sky was a narrow strip of orange-grey outside, growing dark into navy. Kurama watched lazy clouds drift by as the spawn blurted out all the wrong dates for the major battles of the Third Shinobi war.

And the second.

And the first. 

And slammed his palms over his ears as Smoke-and-Mirrors announced that the result was a draw, to a chorus of dismayed reactions.

The spawn's cheeks were ruddy from the force of his arguing. The Uchiha-brat was slowly being cajoled to higher and higher volumes. Kurama looked at Smoke-and-Mirrors, felt the hard brick of uneasiness in his chest coil tight. His jaw clenched in automatic anger.

But he wouldn't do anything.

That was what Kurama had learned. Smoke-and-Mirrors wouldn't do anything, because even though he had Indra's tainted blood and Indra's thrice-cursed eyes, he was also bound. Oath bound. Village bound. Bound by the Monkey-man's laws. Kurama wasn't safe - it wasn't as if the Uchihas were a paragon of mental stability - but Kurama had not been safe for a very, very long time.

Just angry.

Smoke-and-Mirrors wouldn't try anything to the spawn, in the meantime. That was good enough. There was only so much interaction Kurama could stand in a day. At this rate, he was going to have another headache.

The wind chimes above the doorway fluttered, pretty like a squall. Kurama slipped out.

He was two steps from the shop's front stairs, when abruptly, the spawn's voice halted. "Rama, see this is - wait. Where'd you _goooo. R_ ama!" The door jarred open, windchimes clinking against each other in a frenzy. The spawn's chakra fizzled like a sun-shower. "See you Itachi-san! Duck-Butt." A loud snort. "Don't give me that face you're _totally_ a duck-butt. Remember I'm gonna win!" His voice intensified. "Wait up Rama!"

He glanced backwards, just a little bit, stopping to rest his heels in the dirt. The spawn waved a hasty goodbye. His smile was bright, curled at the edges like a cinnamon tart, sweet and round, even as he made a face of disgust at Uchiha-brat, who returned it ten-fold. One last jaunty good-bye, another jabbing insult. The spawn hurtled down the street towards him.

"Fishlips," he complained once he was close enough to touch Kurama's elbow. "I was in the middle of a contest and winning okay! The answer was eighty two. _I had it._ "

The answer had actually been _fifty_ two. Kurama rolled his eyes heaven ward. "You're still terrible at math."

Amongst other things. Like also being a walking, breathing nightmare. And a fucking Uchiha-magnet. And an _idiot_.

But Kurama didn't say any of that.

They walked home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which... Once again I edit the day after posting. So many typos. _Why. ___


	10. Mikoto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The showdown occurs. Also: Introducing Mikoto.

 The next week passed with the spawn engaged in feverish study. Every morning he opened his thin, battered first-year textbooks, mouthing passages as he clumsily tried to manage breakfast at the same time, sometimes gooping an accidental spoonful of miso soup or runny egg-yolk onto the pages. Every night the lamp stayed on later and later to the acceptable bedtime until Kurama got fed up and kicked the spawn out. It was both irritating and remarkable. The irritating took precedence. Kurama did not enjoy getting hounded with a leaking faucet of dates and battlefields and past happenings the human pests deemed important, all bundled with the constant plea of, " _Quiz meeeeeeee Raaaaamaaaaa_."

The spawn was dedicated.

"What's this word," he asked, for the tenth time in five minutes. Late morning sun shone in through the curtains, bright like a stabbing. Kurama rolled over and pulled the covers over his head.

"Mmmgh."

A pause. "Rama?"

No response.

"C'moooon Rama! I gotta win this! Raaaaaamaaaaa! It's against duck butt!"

Nothing again, except a half-muffled snort in the dark. Ha. No. The only thing the spawn _needed_ to do was stay away from the Uchihas. Kurama curled up tighter. Lights-out time. The spawn made a raspberry noise of frustration and in next moment, a foot poked Kurama in the ribs, dug in, and wriggled ferociously.

Kurama shoved him off the bed.

* * *

 On Sunday, Kurama put on his ear plugs, put on his hat to save himself the hideous sunburn, and marched for the quiet of the library. Of course, despite the point of the endeavour being: _get away from spawn_ , Kurama was followed anyway. The spawn carried with him his textbooks, his rumpled worksheets scavenged from underneath the couch cushions, and his outside voice. The librarian side-eyed them with suspicion as they entered. 

That was completely not Kurama's fault. The carpets would remember the joys of back alley mud for the rest of their short linen life, but it was the spawn that had turned the floor into a barn half a season ago. The spawn side-eyed the librarian right back. Kurama ditched him while he wad distracted, bee-lining to the reference aisles where his tastes had recently migrated, and which also served the double duty of being a spawn-deterrent. The brat thought of section as a foreign land, inaccessible and likely hiding monsters made from law books. 

Anthologies with worn and broken spines stacked the shelves, next to long, tightly rolled scrolls. Two slightly lumpy loveseats were tucked in front of a low table. Paintings, some small and done in western oils, other ink on scroll, hung in a neat collection above the loveseats. 

There was one of Matatabi, a profile painting, black and blue and an one slitted eye of gold.

Kurama didn't know how long it had been there. The painting was on crinkled paper, drawn in blue-faded ink under black of her markings, back-lit by the faint curve of mountain and loose cloud. But it looked like her. At least, decently. Giant flaming blue cats the size of a mountain range were not all that hard to portray. She was curled up at the base of a valley with her nose hidden behind twin tails, her golden eye gleaming like a moon against the night. The painting had a black background,  done over with white ink for the mountains and clouds. Blue and yellow were the only colours present. The paper was heavy but chafing. There was no date or artist.

Thirty years after father died, Matatabi had settled into Lightning's mountain ranges and claimed them as her own. Kurama used to wonder if she stayed there for the nostalgia; Father's temple had been in the mountains. But she'd always found something delightful in the illusion of fog and snow, found something worth looking after in life pushing itself up from scraggly sediment. Kurama remembered her telling him about the monks - because there had always been monks back then - building monasteries from limestone and slate and their bare hands.

She'd been sealed nearly a hundred years ago. All of them had. Damned Senju and Uchiha blood. Kurama looked at the painting and wondered if a charge of her chakra still remained in that mountain air, tasting of ghost-fire.

It was likely. After all, the land wasn't like humans; it never forgot.

* * *

 The spawn found him two hours later, back in the apartment, while Kurama was on the couch reading anthologies. A new book had been added to his ragged pile of Academy issued ones:  hardcover, clean, with a picture of the Hokage Monument slapped on the front and a title that read :  _An Overview of Konoha's Greatest Leaders._

He leaned over Kurama and peered. "Whaddyou - ew. Poetry again?"

"Excuse you," said Kurama dryly, and looked pointedly at the spawn's own selection, which Kurama knew he couldn't read on thickness alone.

"Oh yeah that," said the spawn. He dumped all his papers onto the ground, sat down on the couch, and then flipped open the new book to a chapter that said: The Rise of the Yondaime. "Can you -"

"No," Kurama said.

He already knew what the next words out of the spawn's mouth was going to be. Which was: _read this to me Rama_. Which had a very self-evident answer in itself. What the hell, he thought the spawn would be avoiding anything on Namikaze at all costs, not _actively seeking the bastard out._

In retrospect, that was stupid of him.

The spawn's lower lip jutted. " _Ehh_?"

"No."

"Just one chap-"

_"No._ "

"But why-"

"Why do you _think,_ " said Kurama, and looked at him as if he were a crazy person.

The spawn scowled, put the book down, and said: "yeah okay that," which may prove that he had some brain-cells yet, before carrying on with "But that's _why_  we should in the first place." He had a forgingly determined look on his face, like he was when it came to having ramen three dinners per week, and Kurama closed his eyes and wondered where exactly the spawn's thought processes had veered.

Parts unknown, that was where. Always, always, parts unknown.

Opening his eyes, Kurama adjusted his grip on he anthology and whacked the spawn over the head. "No," he said. He rolled over so that his back pointedly faced the spawn.

The spawn belly-flopped himself over an armrest, held out his arms, and covered Kurama's nose and vision with tiny, closely spaced ant tot.

Mentally, Kurama counted to five.

Then he punched the book.

It flipped in the air, flew in a straight arc, and landed next to the closet door.

Unfortunately, that was not the end of that. Two days later came and so did Dog-brat, bringing with him the gift of pork chow-mien, natto, and mango cheesecake. Kurama ate, the spawn inhaled —as in one huge breath and all the food was gone —before he snagged Dog-brat by the mask and propelled him inside the bedroom by the hair. With the book in hand.

"RAAMAAA!" the spawn hollered from inside. "YOU KNOW IF YOU —"  Kurama stuffed his earplugs in and silently ferreted the rest of the cheesecake for himself. A good half was still left, with sweet, icy frosting and little slabs of chocolate arranged on top. He could totally finish the entire thing. If the spawn was asking for Namikaze's bibliography for his  _bed-time reading_ , he was completely undeserving of cake. 

* * *

 The much anticipated deadline came in a swirl of humidity and rain-lined streets, leftover water from the last night's thunderstorm dripping down metal pipes and apartment windows. It was now two weeks later to the unfortuante Uchiha encounter. Kurama knew this for fact, because the spawn had circled the date around ten times over in red pen.

When morning arrived, logically, Kurama locked the spawn in the bathroom.

What were the odds of those dratted Uchiha even showing up? Thin. But not impossible. Which was why the spawn was staying in the bathroom until maybe five in the evening so this entire thing could blow over, never to be mentioned again. 

At the meantime, Kurama sat at the dining table and made revisions of his sealing notes. Energetic pounding came from down the hallway. Kurama couldn't hear it as noise exactly -- his earplugs were in -- but the walls trembled and the floors trembled and the vibration could be felt in his teeth. "Rama I have an ap-point-ment!" came the spawn's faint, indignant cries. His chakra was sparking in irritation.  

Eventually the pounding stopped.

So did the whining.

Kurama paused at the utter irregularity of it and found the spawn's signature not where it should be, which was to say, not directly in the chakra equivalent of his face. It wasn't far off though, like shifting half a step to the right.

It just wasn't in the apartment.

Kurama slammed down his pencil and scrambled for the bathroom.  _  
_

The chair was where he'd heaved it, placed delicately to trap the locking mechanism of the doorknob. The bathroom was empty, the bathroom window was open. Frosted glass gave way to a drab alley and an unflattering view of the building next door. Kurama heaved himself halfway up to the sill, wheezed, and then kind of wriggled the rest of his bodyweight over. He looked down.

Then he closed his eyes, ground his teeth, and said, a tone of flat despair, "how."

A lot, Kurama had found, could be crammed into one word.

"Not telling!"

Kurama cracked open one eye. The spawn had a finger pointed accusingly at Kurama's face, expression mulish. "... No?" he asked dully.

" _No!_ " the spawn emphasized. "You're being _mean._ "

"Never said I wasn't," said Kurama.

There was mud on the spawn's clothes, mud on his elbows, mud on his chin and knobby knees. Kurama thought of all the ways one could get that dirty from point A. Apartment to point B. ground, and ended up with a list of maybe two options. Actually —more like one-and-a-half. They were basically the same thing. Chakra burned through his muscles, a spark, and Kurama lifted himself higher, to a sit, then a stand, then vertical.

The drop was only four stories, not even half-height of most trees in the damned village. When Kurama walked his way down he spotted dents in the brick, suspiciously similar to the shoe size of an almost six-year-old. Then the spot, maybe three meters up, where said dents vanished, and whereafter the spawn presumably fell on his face into the mud.

"I think I know how you got down," he said.

Petulant look number five appeared in response. "Show off," said the spawn.

"You have the control of a ramen bowl, yes."

"I like being a ramen bowl," the spawn said aggressively  which was wildly out of context but not wrong, considering his noodle consumption, before snagging Kurama's arm in his freakishly strong grip. "And I can do that too!" He lugged the both of them over to the nearest redwood tree. Kurama watched him walk resolutely up the trunk, shoulders straight, tongue out, arms spread for balance. His steps left imprints in the bark.

Four and a half months later and the spawn could now do five meters of vertical in the most unsubtle climb ever. They wouldn't even need to call in the bug clan, long as the hunter-nin had eyes and half a braincell.

The spawn paused, and twisted. Muddied shoes pointed downwards towards the ground. His first grin of the morning was plain and obnoxious on his face, too wide as he flung out his hands, declaring, "See Rama! I, the awesome -"

And fell.

Kurama went left two steps, backwards three, as the spawn yelped, dropped, and then bounced as he smacked the ground.

"Ow," he muffled.

For a long moment he stayed there: forehead pressed to the ground, arms sprawled to the side. Kurama counted: One, two, three. Heartbeats. And then rolled his eyes hard as the spawn levered himself up with precise timing. "Rama." he whined, face petulant. "You didn't catch me!"

"Not in this lifetime," Kurama said dryly.

The spawn scrunched his nose at him. "But you were right there!"

"Yes. And if I _stayed_ right there, I would've have been squashed flat." The spawn continued to look up with dubiousness. Kurama said: "Ugh," blew out a breath, reached down to find what looked like the sole spot on the spawn's arm that wasn't crusted in dirt and heaved him up. That unconvinced expression was ridiculous, because they both knew Kurama's healing factor was poorly, _damnedly_ behind the spawn's and the rest of the human population's, garbage shell being what it was.

"Like a pancake?" the spawn asked.

"Please don't provide me with imagery," said Kurama.

"So _exactly_ like a pancake," said the spawn with emphasis, and really, what did Kurama just say? The spawn continued. "I don't want a Rama-pancake."

"Good to know."

"I wanna beat duck-butt!"

Aaaand they were back to the damned Sharingan.

He had thought they had strayed away from that topic. Evidently not. How focused exactly was the spawn on this thrice damned Uchiha-brat anyway? Maybe Kurama should just conk him over the head and wait for the day to pass. It wouldn't take long. It would just be like the bathroom idea but with more unconsciousness and thus less variables to factor in, like the spawn chakra-sticking himself down the apartment wall. Unfortunately, and with much precedence, Kurama knew exactly how fast the spawn bounced back from, well, everything. Option C would work but permanent brain damage was sadly off the table. And Kuraman couldn't overpower the spawn in any physical manner for any long period of time, fuck biology, which left a grand total of option D.

Option D was known as Let Him Go and Provide Supervision, because like hell Kurama was leaving the idiot spawn alone within a hundred meter raidus of a Sharingan connection. It was also know as option: _Arrrrrgghhh,_  because that summed up Kurama's feelings pretty exactly.

With great control, Kurama closed his eyes to ward off the incoming migraine.

"I cannot _believe_  you."

The spawn linked their arms. "Oh blah-blah-blah. C'mon Rama, I'm gonna beat duck-butt, and _then_ we're gonna eat pancakes." And Kurama wanted to whack him all over again.

He didn't bother to dig his heels int the dirt though; futility was futility and oceans were oceans, and the spawn ragged him close saying: "I've got this I've super got this, I read everything over five times an' practiced with Inu an' worked on my Katas an' even my maths even though they're stupid and hard and memorized all the cool battles from the first aaaalll the way up to the last bit of Third Great War - " Kurama did hihis breathing exercises. He thought, prayerful, slightly fanatical thoughts of the Uchiha-brat having died in a ditch or having stumbled his way into some equally fortunate event that would place his presence far _far_ away from Kurama's.

Unfortunately, these days, Kurama knew circumstances really did not like going his way.

* * *

 

Point being: Uchiha-brat and Smoke-and-mirrors were waiting at the ice-cream parlor when they barrelled through the front doors. Chakra sense told Kurama before he even went in: bonfires, smoke. It sent a shuddering tingle down his spine.

The spawn, of course, took no notice of the threat. With a gleeful whoop he sprinted full-speed forwards, and skidded to a halt next to Uchiha-brat's chair. "Are you ready to lose Duck-butt?"

Uchiha-brat viscously crunched the remainder of his cone. "You mean, are _you_ ready to lose. _Dumbo_." And primly wiped his mouth while the spawn squawked.

While they were engaged with that, Smoke-and-mirrors turned to fix eyes on Kurama, who would rather be anywhere but in his line of sight, thanks. "I believe this will take a while," he said, as Kurama ignored him (as much as it was possible to) and went to a seat two tables over. He had a china bowl of red-bean ice-cream half-eaten in front of him, and an empty mug of tea. "Would you like to order something?"

Oh, Kurama would order alright.

The ice-cream lady gave him his strawberry-banana, chocolate drizzle waffle parfait (with free sprinkles) before she came over to the other side of the counter.

"Chiaki-san will serve as the referee," Smoke-and-mirrors explained.

Ice-cream Akimichi brandished up what looked like a dusty, slightly torn workbook. "I do this _all_ the time for my younger cousins," she said cheerfully. "Now, Itachi-san informed me we're going first year style?"

There were two stages. The first stage was theory. The rules involved answering questions. The first person with their hand up got first right to answer. Thus, completely predictably, the spawn was flinging up his arm before the entire question was out every single time.... whether he knew the right answer or not. His critical thinking and analysis abilities were not great. Actually they were trash, like the critical thinking and analysis of every single six year old human brat in existence. The Uchiha-brat's were better but not by much. The Uchiha-brat's memorization was probably better by a lot, but the spawn had not been kidding when he said he'd read everything over five times.

That Uchiha-brat was definitely more methodical. This did not however, seem to be helping him.

"Stop doing that!"

He smacked down the spawn's arm as it went up five words into the question, again, specifically on: " _At what date did the_ -" Likely, the spawn would have kept his hand up the entire time if Ice-cream Akimichi didn't tell him that was against the rules.

"Scared you're losing?" crowed the spawn.

" _No_ ," said Uchiha-brat, glowering mutinously.

From then on, it just became a contest of "who could raise the hand first." The spawn and Uchiha-brat studied each other, muscles tense and eyes narrowed. Smoke-and-mirrors got a refill of tea.

Forty questions later and two refills later, they were finally done.

Kurama had finished his ice-cream, finished his waffle, and was poking at pieces of thawed out banana and strawberry as Ice-cream Akimichi tallied the points. One glance at both the spawn and Uchiha-brat showed faces red with exertion. They kept going from glowering at each other to focusing lazor-eyed on the Ice-cream Akimichi, (as if if they tried hard enough, they would be see through the textbook backing to the results page) to glowering back at each other. This exchange continued until, with great flourish, the textbook was set down, the tallying pencil was set down, and Ice-cream Akimichi smiled winningly.

"So I won right?" blurted the spawn, launching himself up.

"Of course you didn't.  _I won._ " Unsubtly, Uchiha-brat was trying to read the tallying chart. Upsidedown.

 "Well," said Ice-cream Akimichi. "it was _actually_... A tie."

Kurama had his earplugs out of his pocket, screwed in tight through a motion borne out of long, repeated habit, before the resounding: "What!" came in perfect tone-pitch symphony.

Protests came first, marked by the wild hand gestures and voracious opening and closing of both larval mouths. Then came the scuffle, which was viscous but shortly and neatly separated by Smoke-and-mirrors. He held them both by the collar like unruly cats, and then with the Ice-cream Akimichi looking deeply amused behind him, went through a backdoor to deposit them on a slightly muddy patch of grass.

Kurama popped out his earplugs just in time to hear that the second stage was a spar.

Of course the spawn lunged first.

Uchiha-brat had four times more technique, that much was obvious five seconds in. His movements were precise and quick and fluid, one following up on the steps of another without conscious thought. He got in more hits, and they were hard and bruising. The spawn just happened to get up—to _bounce_ back, like a bloody rubber ball—every single time. And then he tried to tackle Uchiha-brat to the ground.

Three minutes passed and Uchiha-brat looked equal parts bewildered and frustrated. The spawn, for the tenth time, launched himself forwards to try to head-butt Uchiha-brat in the ribs.

"Stay down, you annoying - urk!"

"Got you!" said the spawn, as Uchiha brat went down. An elbow smacked him shortly in the face.

Four times technique versus four times stamina. They were equal in pigheaded stubbornness and willingness to play dirty. Kurama noted one near-successful attempt where the spawn wrapped his fingers around a chunk of black hair and yanked, another when Uchiha-brat, finally fed up, decided to knee the spawn in parts unmentionable. It wasn't really a spar anymore.  More like a brawl. A mud bath? Basically the first encounter but with more supervision. Smoke-and-mirrors stood with an air of desensitized zen, heating his tea with sparks of chakra-fire and consuming it in slow sips.

There was something _off_ about him. Even for a Uchiha. Smoke and fire and funeral pyres and deep earth. Kurama knew it, from - somewhere. It felt like a prickle of a warning on his neck.

Kurama... tried to steer as far from Smoke-and-mirrors as possible. Yeah. Okay.

The brawl part however, did give advantage to the spawn. When it came to a matter of the last one standing - or outlasting - it was like contrasting a candle-flame to a sun. The spawn sat on Uchiha-brat's back, who struggled futilely, weighed down by exhaustion.

Two black eyes, possibly a fractured wrist, and a shirt beyond saving was the end result. Like hell they were gonna put that in the laundry. Uchiha-brat wasn't much better. Black just hid stains better than yellow. 

"The winner is Naruto-san," said Smoke-and-mirrors.

"Hah!" crowed the spawn.

He raised one clenched, dirty, slightly bloody fist in triumph. Underneath him, the Uchiha-brat stopped struggling, going still and slumped in the dirt, chakra an incensed, if exhausted frizzle under his skin.

The spawn continued: "I won! Hah! Hahaha! See Duck-butt? Now I get! I get..." he paused, frowned, contemplated. "Uh... what'd I get again?"

"Ugh," muttered Uchiha-brat.

"Wha?"

"You're an _idiot._ "

"Hey!"

"You get to dye his hair pink," Kurama interjected, because that was something he'd actually like to see.

"Oh yeah," said the spawn in remembrance. "And parfait! Hair and parfait!" He glanced down at his stomach and rubbed it with one hand, frowning seriously. "But I don't want parfait. I want ramen."

"I don't care what you wanna eat," grunted Uchiha-brat. "Get _off_ of me."

The spawn looked down, said, "oh yeah," and got off. Uchiha-brat rolled over to his back and then to a sit, scraping the mud from his cheek, glowering.

"It will be lunch soon," noted Smoke-and-mirrors.

In any case, the spawn considered this dilemma very seriously for five seconds. That translated to more than Kurama saw for pretty much any other topic in existence, before he came to a decision. Which was: Ramen. Obviously.

"Kay! We're going to Ichiraku's!" He looked monumentally pleased with himself.

"What in the Saidaime's pipe is Ichiraku's?" muttered Uchiha-brat.

Ah. Thought Kurama. _Ahhh_. That was the wrong thing to say.

Unblinkingly, the spawn stared at Uchiha-brat. And stared and stared and stared, expression in the blankly offended way of someone facing sacrilege of the highest order. That would be the equivalent. Slowly, he reached out a hand, and patted Uchiha-brat on the shoulder with a gentleness reserved for the Ones-Unknowing-Of-The-Miracles-of-Ichiraku-Ramen.  Uchiha-brat looked at the hand like it was live wire.

"It'll be okay duck-butt," soothed the spawn.

"Nii-san," said Uchiha brat warily, "can we go home now?"

In response, the spawn slung a companionable arm over Uchiha-brat's shoulders and heaved him up. "It's okay," he repeated. He swerved to face Kurama with maniacal cheer. "Rama! We're gonna show him _all_ the good stuff."

* * *

Market place smells: oil and salt and the cutting tang of fish-blood. It was noon and the crowd was strong, the restaurant stalls open to let hot steam unfurl into the air. There were women with baskets and men with shopping bags, sticky-fingered children zooming underfoot as their parents clustered. Shopkeepers heaved wooden crates to and fro. The sound of oil sizzling. Uchiha-brat stuck like super-glue to his brother's side, the spawn, on the other, one hand having found itself linked to Smoke-and-mirrors. The other clutched Kurama's in a death grip as he chattered on about broth combinations, long and winding to hide the nervousness that seemed to have explicatively emerged now that he wasn't arguing.

They were half a block away from the Noodle-man's stall when Smoke-and-mirrors stopped in the middle of the street, head tilting slightly. The spawn missed a step and flailed. Kurama followed Smoke-and-mirrors's gaze, and a woman in blue peeled herself away from a distant stall to step towards them.

She called, in a damingly, damningly familiar voice: "Itachi? Sasuke-chan?'

"Mother," said Smoke-and-mirrors.

Kurama stared at him.

He knew. He _knew_ the brat had seemed familiar.

He'd felt the warning tingle down like an electric shock and ignored it because all Uchihas were too-pale skinned and dark haired, and Smoke-and-mirrors was more rumbling earth than air-lightning, more earth than thunderstorm to go with the fire branded in his blood. And it was a distraction. It was a freaking red-herring. It was like Uzumaki Kushina's will or spirit or whatever was actively crossing dimensional barriers and _death_ in its effort to ruin Kurama's life and _succeeding_ —

"Mom!" cried Uchiha-brat.

The chakra came first.

Heat, with an edge of electric pressure, wrapped tight in jounin pathways, fine like smoke and sharp as glass edges and tasting of ozone. It was familiar and had been for the last twenty-five years even though Kurama hadn't felt it in six. There was a Sharingan somewhere behind there, claret eyes and ancient brushstrokes harvested through iron and war and the cold ruthlessness of trenches.

The crowd flowed, and Uchiha Mikoto stepped out.

Her hair was long, loose and straight around her shoulders. She was in a navy summer yukata with silvery leaves on her sleeves and flowers on her obi. The Uchiha symbol on her back: red, white, fan. The groceries in her hands: white. 

 She smiled. There was nothing inherently malicious about it. Her chakra still apart from a flash of smothered surprise. She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and said: "Hello."

Kurama's first urge was to bolt and his second urge was to bolt, because really. Really? _How was this his luck?_

Uchiha-brat let go of Smoke-and-mirror's hand and reached for Uchiha Mikoto's, whom neatly divested her groceries onto her eldest to pick him up. "Mom, what are you doing here!"

She smiled indulgently. "Well, your great-grandmother is planning to come over and mom needs to prepare her favourite tea-cakes Sasuke-chan." She regarded Kurama and the spawn, and Kurama felt his muscles lock very tightly together. "Introduce me to your new friends?"

"They're not my friends," Uchiha-brat said.

"No?"

"No."

For once, Kurama was sincerely and utterly grateful for the Uchiha-brat. Yes. Of-course. _Nothing to see here._ If they could just be ignored and on their way elsewhere _right now_  —

"Sasuke has been quite taken with them, actually," Smoke-and-mirrors, to two identical looks of horror from Kurama and the Uchiha-brat. "This is Menma-san and Naruto-san."

"It's very nice to meet you," said Uchiha Mikoto. "Menma-kun -" Kurama clenched his fingers into fists. "Naruto-kun -" and she smiled, a patented smile, one that Uzumaki Kushina had used to generate free food from unsuspecting bystanders for a decade up until her best friend's engagement. Like most that had come before him, the spawn went red at the ears and kind of melted into himself.

"Yeah!" he squeaked. "That's me!"

_For the love of Father._

Smoke-and-mirrors stepped in neatly. "We are proceeding to lunch," he explained. "Naruto-san wanted to introduce Sasuke to Ramen."

"Ichiraku's?"

"You know Ichiraku's?" asked the spawn, high-pitched. 

"It was a favourite when I was a little younger. I haven't gone for a while, though." She lowered herself gracefully until was eye-level with the spawn. "May I join you, Naruto-kun?"

"Um," said the spawn. His cheeks were pink, and he seemed stuck in a state of nerves and wide-eyes. "Yeah! If you wanna. I mean, you do wanna, so. Yeah! Of course!

"Do I not get a say in this," went Kurama's six-year old mouth. Uchiha Mikoto's attention zeroed onto him like some great and terrible bird of prey and he internally kicked himself. 

"If this is uncomfortable for you, Menma-kun," she started.

The spawn's elbow connected with Kurama's ribcage. He made a shot-deer sound. 

"No! It's fine! Rama's just being prickly." barrelled the spawn. "Everyone's invited! C'mon let's go. The old man has the best tea boiled eggs at lunch. They're awesome with the sauce..." He stepped forward determinedly, saw that Smoke-and-mirrors was occupied by groceries, halted, and then grasped at Uchiha Mikoto's when she offered it.

"Mooom," said Uchiha-brat.

The spawn didn't even make a face. Well, he was, but it one of pink-cheeked happiness as he blinked up at Uchiha Mikoto.

One of these days, Kurama was actually going to commit homicide. 

* * *

__

"Mikoto-chan?" Noodle-man's face brightened. "How have you been?"

"Well, thank you Teuchi-san. I hope the menu hasn't changed much?"

They sat like this: Uchiha Mikoto in the middle with her spawn on one side and Kushina's spawn and Kurama on the other, as the Noodle-man poured tea and the spawn gave an extremely detailed rundown of the menu. Pork and miso. Barbecue chicken. Hot rib. Beef tenderloin. Kurama wasn't listening. He was explicitly aware that there was only one thing sitting between him and a fully matured pair of Sharingan eyes, one spawn, who would fold like tissue paper under current circumstances and a smile.

Kurama should have just told him about the Uchiha situation pre-hand. That would've rendered the entire past two weeks obsolete and saved Kurama from this pit of bad decisions.

But no. And now Uchiha Mikoto was _watching him._

She was subtle about it, but Kurama's nerves felt oil-doused and then set on fire, all systems cranked on hyper-awareness, all higher functions directed to surveillance. He gripped the wood of his chopsticks until the ends digging into his palm brought focus. She was definitely, definitely watching him. Had been, since they were walking. Kurama breathed in, breathe out. In his ears his blood was pounding. He felt like a rabbit caught in a fox's gaze, trapped, high-strung, shaking fingers, rolling stomach. How the _hell_ did he not notice Smoke-and-mirrors? Stupid, stupid. Kushina had babysat that brat two days a week or whenever she could off-mission, dragging him everywhere since he was a tiny, hideous plum faced infant.

Something kicked him in the shin.

"Rama," said the spawn, like a heart-attack. "Your turn to order!"

Kurama looked at him blankly. He ordered.

And then he went to deflect conversation.

Uchiha Mikoto tried thrice, gently, smoothly — "How was your day, Menma-kun?" A grunt. "Is seafood your favourite?" No answer. "How have you found Sasuke and Itachi?" Doubly no asnwer —and all three times Kurama evaded the openings like they were rapid-fire Katons. The spawn tried a lot more than thrice; Kurama kicked him. He fixed his eyes on the noodles and nowhere else.

Uchiha Mikoto had easier targets though; she went to engage the others. Conversation turned to the day's events and the coming of the new school year and the spawn's favourite ramen (which was all of them, with a particular emphasis on Pork), and also, "oh Sasuke-chan, try this, it's very good," and ordering a plate full of steamed vegetables.

Dutifully, Uchiha-brat ate them.

"So," she propped her chin on her palm, smiling. "Itachi tells me you had a competition? How did it go?"

"Awesome," said the spawn, slurped up the last dregs of broth from his fourth bowl, and launched into a step-by-step recitation. "I punched here," the spawn made a battle noise, " and then he tried to kick me but I dodged -"

"- You mean you got lucky and _slipped on mud_ -"

"- Whaddyou mean lucky? I'm just awesome. And I got you good. See _after_ I did the throw thingy -"

"Which you didn't do right -"

"I totally did it right! Also, this is my turn duck-butt. Hush. I swept out his feet and - "

"- tried to eat my hair."

"Who would want to eat your hair?"

" _You._ But mom, I kicked his instep around gave him that blackeye-"

"And I gave you _that_ blackeye."

"I'm sure you were both very excellent," Uchiha Mikoto soothed, ending that competition before it could start. Around her the table was stacked high with bowls and dishes -- four bowls and five side-plates the spawn's alone, Mikoto's own bowl emptied and arranged with the chopsticks placed precisely on top. Smoke-and-mirrors was eating dango, Uchiha-brat drinking juice. Kurama had barely finished half of his own food, the noodles soggy now, floating with the limp vegetables. Broth tasted like rock in his mouth.

She turned to Kurama again, whose face was fixed in a glower and only glowered harder when she addressed him. "And what about you, Menma-kun?"

Ha. Good luck getting an answer. Kurama was giving exactly nothing.

Uchiha brat sent a withering look. "Mom, he's not worth it."

" _Duck-butt!_ "

Uchiha Mikoto placed a hand on each aggrieved shoulder, pushed them down. "It's quite alright. I shouldn't bother him if he doesn't want to talk." Black eyes fixed on Kurama, dark enough to be a night sky. "You just remind me of someone I used to know."

Kurama owned a mirror.  "Ah," he said flatly.

He also didn't need the reminder, thanks. 

"Th is restaurant was her favurite in the village," she continued. Her head tiled, hair a black spill to one shoulder. She laughed softly. Alarm bells jumped yet another level in Kurama's internal warning system. "I'm feeling a little nostalgic, I suppose."

"Ah," Kurama said, in tones he hoped communicated vague agreement.  

"What's nos-tal-gic?" asked the spawn. Kurama could have kissed him.

"It means to miss something very much," Uchiha Mikoto explained, attention diverted, temporarily at least. "This place makes me very nostalgic. My best friend, you see, came here whenever she could." Her chopsticks flashed; she indicated to the tower of the spawn's empty ramen bowls "Pork rib was her favourite as well."

When all the food was done - or in Kurama's cacse, cold - Uchiha Mikoto paid, collected her spawn, and faced them with her groceries tucked at her elbow, "It would be my pleasure to see you again, Naruto-kun, Menma-kun."

"Me too!" said the spawn.

Kurama clawed white-knuckled restraints on his urge to flee fast enough to leave dust-trails. He waited until she was out of sight before catching spawn's arm and walking, fast as he could, in the opposite direction.

"She was so nice," said the spawn, allowing himself to be dragged.

"Mmm."

"And Duck-butt! We've met his brother! And his mom! And she paid for ramen. And we beat each other up! That means we're friends now right?"

He could feel his migraine pounding harder. "... Mmm."

"Hey, do you think we'll get free ramen again?"

Absolutely not.

There was no Uchiha Mikoto in the future. There couldn't be. Uchiha Mikoto, whom Kushina had known ages nine to twenty-six where she'd died, with her Sharingan eyes and cut-glass smile and razor perception. Kurama was going to stay far away from her and _the spawn_ was going to stay far away from her. They had to. Kurama could still feel the shake of adrenaline in his hands, the clench of his fingers into wood, breathing in and out and knowing she was sitting right there and feeling helpless for it.

He was going to get the spawn to stay away even if convincing him took Kurama's entire reservoir of Uchiha misdeeds.

* * *

Nighttime, the lights out, the curtains drawn. This is how it went:

"Right... so... Duck-butt's clan is... bad?"

"Yes."

"And one of them. Um. Madara? He sicked the fox on the village and killed lots of people."

"Yes."

"And that's why we're here. Like this."

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Get it now?"

"Um. Sort of? Sort of. Okay, so, this guy. Madara. He's bad. But I mean, they can't all be bad, right?"

"No they can certai —"

"I mean, Rama, Duck-butt's a dumbo and a pissy head but his bro is nice and his mom is super super super _duper_ nice and she bought us ramen! No one who gives free ramen can be _bad."_

"You can't base your moral standards on _ramen."_

"I totally can. I totally totally — Oh ow! Okay okay Rama! Don't make that face at me. But She was, like. Her smile didin't do any weird thing, and she asked me questions and called me by my name —"

"That's called a _ploy."_

"... A ploy? You're using big words again. What's a ploy?"

"Something deceiving."

"Uh. Still dunno. Try again?"

_"For the love of Father."_

"I don't get why you don't like her though. You're kinda weird sometimes. Look look she called us Naruto- _kun_  and Menma—Wait. _Raaaaama._ Is this cuz she called your real name? Rama Rama Rama, if you don't like it you have to _tell her."_

"It's _not that_."

"Don't worry! I'll tell her next time. It'll be great!

Uchiha Mikoto was Uzumaki Kushina's best-friend of fifteen years come to make Kurama's life difficult. The spawn, on the other hand, was her will and screaming vengeance and mad stupidity gone straight over the curve to genius, haunting his every waking moment.

* * *

 Fall again. September. The leaves went brown and red and fell in flurries. When he was young Kurama used to breathe his chakra underneath the Earth's crust at this time, leave it to settle with the white blanket of winter, leave it for spring to unravel in sweet-flowers and vibrant growth, like a gift. They were his to tend to: the forests and the plains of Southern Fire. They all held their own claim, Kurama's siblings. Shukaku's fire flowers and Isobu's algae forests, the deep coral reefs where Gyuuki slept. Chomei, her hot, colourful tropics. Matatabi and the mountains swept in mist.

Kurama's forests and praries held fire in their key-lines. Their endless stretches of golden grass, hitting the horizon line and rolling farther, far enough to run on. Blue skies. A sunset like the world ending. When he died that was where he would be reincarnated, in a place where the grass had fire in their roots and the air knew the song of Kurama's chakra.

Fall again. Somewhere outside the leaves were falling. Somewhere in the front hall the spawn was tying the laces of his brand new shoes. To Kurama's chakra sight he was a creature of sun and bonfire, no earth, and a single thread of water-wind inheritance that did not counterbalance.

The front door opened. Click- _shhhhk_.  A bag was heaved up.  "I'm going!" the spawn called.

A new school year had begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I typed most of this up in one sitting so, not gonna lie, it's a bit rough. But for now I just wanted it out of my hard-dive. If anyone notices any typos/spelling errors/ grammar fails please let me know. And if there's anything you liked, leave it in a comment on your way out!


	11. The Waning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we have a glimpse on what's happening in Naruto-land, go to a festival, and have a whole lot of introperspection.

 Inuzuka Kiba was six-and-a-half years old. According to the spawn, he had:  the coolest sweater, the coolest squinty-eyed white-brown puppy, and also the coolest farts _ever_ , which he could regulate to three different pitches. His love for mud-fights and juvenile pranks was unrivaled. He shared his spicy jerky at lunch. Sometimes his older sister had failed baking experiments and he and the spawn got to pry apart the good, sugary bits and chuck the rest of the butter monstrosity at unsuspecting squirrels. He had bumped into the spawn in the second week of the new Academy year, wrinkled his nose, said: "you smell weird," in bluntly antagonistic tones known only to small children, and got consequentially punched in the face.

 

An hour later, he and the spawn were, quote on quote, " _awesome friends."_

The spawn talked a lot about Inuzuka Kiba.

The spawn could not _stop_ talking about Inuzuka Kiba.

Actually, the spawn couldn't stop talking about a multitude of people. They included but were not limited to: Nara Shikamaru, who slept a lot and thus got his faced desecrated with marker every lunch-break. Chouji, no discernible last-name, with a never-ending parade of chips and three-tiered bentos the spawn liked to steal from. Shino, who could list every bug there was in the textbook. And also Uchiha-brat. It was plenty obvious from the spawn's recollections that Uchiha-brat tried his best to negate the spawn's existence through force of will, but always in the end found himself roped into whatever dumb ass competition the spawn had set up anyway.

The spawn talked about Uchiha brat nearly as much as he talked about Inuzuka Kiba. Kurama would rather he talk about Inuzuka; nothing that came out of the spawn's mouth in relation to Uchiha was ever good.

Case in point: Uchiha Mikoto was making him lunch.

Uchiha Mikoto was making the spawn triple-tier bentos with cutesy sea-weed faced rice-balls and squid-stuffed takoyaki in sweet sauce, egg-rolls,  sushi, tomato-egg soup; the whole nine yards of culinary expertise zeroed in to make healthy meals seem as appetizing as possible for a six-year old. Sadly, that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that Uchiha Mikoto was making _two_  of those boxes, hand-delivered by a recalcitrant Uchiha-brat at every lunch break, and that second box had _"Menma-kun"_   taped to the top.

It'd started a week ago and proceeded, like horribly unwanted fungus, to march on without pause. Every day. A new bento. Another card on top, with its sharp, sweeping hand. " _Menma-kun."_

She was _persistent._

Kurama didn't go to the Academy. Thus, like clockwork, the spawn carted back a new bento every single afternoon. He'd dumped the first one, dumped the second one, allowed the spawn to have the third one. " I don't want. You can eat it yourself."

The spawn didn't. Sometimes he ate half, but Kurama knew very well that two bentos was equivalently nothing compared to the eight bowls of ramen the spawn consumed every trip to the Noodle-man's. He kept bringing them back, like somewhere in his fool brain "no" pinged into "yes" and did cartwheels around sensibility  Today, in a demonstration of this exact trait, he pried open a bento, pointed to the contents gone cold and said, with great emphasis, as if Kurama was the one being unreasoble: "Look she made us salmon-rice balls! And cake. Chocolate cake. With strawberries. I know it's your favourite -- you have to eat it Rama  _I saved you some._ "

The spawn was also persistent.

That made three, because Kurama didn't even look at the cake. He took the box, kicked open the lid of the trashcan, and was half-way to dumping cake and remaining onigiri inside when the spawn tackled him to the ground, clutching the bento above his head with white-knuckled hands.

"Rama _I saved you chocolate cake."_

Kurama made a rude gesture at him.

The spawn took the cake, held it by the bottom, and then before Kurama could sit or roll away or try another lunch-disposal, mushed it into his face.

"There," the spawn said, mouth screwed sideways.

_"_ Ark," hissed Kurama, because there was Uchiha-made frosting on his _eyelashes._

He clawed at his eyes. Didn't work. Kurama rolled for where he knew the stool was and scrabbled up to the sink, turned on the tap, pooled frizzling water in his hands and then just gave up entirely when it splashed out of his fingers. He dunked his head in under the spray. Water damped his hair and sliced over the skin of his eyelids. Kurama held for a count of seven, came up gasping, and found Uchiha-made frosting _still_ clumped exactly where it was.

"You'll needa truyat sooommmtooom," muffled the spawn with great dissaproval. Chocolate was on the floor. The spawn sat cross-legged, cramming the rest of the cake slice into bulging cheeks.

Kurama didn't bother to deign that with a response.

He wrung the water out of his fringe and reached for a paper towel. The spawn, finished with his cake, bounced to his heels. How did he manage so much energy? Ugh. Kurama rubbed the paper towel against his eyes and scowled down the brown sugar smudges.

"I'm going to nap," he told the spawn, turning heel. "Don't bother me."

* * *

 Second Sundays were never good days. The Monkey-man's paper piles were growing tall again, whether they were binned, paper-clipped, or hidden away in thin vanilla folders. On the table was: milk, a plate of warm dorayaki. Kurama bit into one such sandwich and licked the sweet azuki paste off the top of his teeth.

As usual, the Monkey-man inquired about their day, inquired about their week, and sat patiently through the spawn's enthusiastic ramblings. He made the appropriate interested noises at the appropriate times, asked simple questions that helped steer the brick wall of information and, sometime near minute seven and Kurama's third doriyaki bun, tapped tabacco into the bowl of his pipe and lit it with a spark of chakra-fire.

Eventually the spawn swerved -- or swan-dived more like it -- into the topic of his now unending list of other larval-staged humans.

"I'm glad you've made friends," said the Monkey-man, once the spawn halted for lack of breath. He looked at Kurama, who only now realized the neat little opening the spawn had allowed, and spent a second to brace himself for the inevitable. On cue, the Monkey-man went:  "You still haven't been going to school, Menma-kun." 

He sounded dissapointed.

Kurama had learned the patience for this game

"I've not," he managed, matter of fact.

The Monkey-man said: "I assure you, Miozumi-sensei is excellent at her job." That was an olive branch, probably. It'd been one of Kurama's complaints the last time they'd held this conversation.

"So I've heard."

The spawn snagged a doriyaki. "Mio-sensei's _cool."_

"She has an excellent well of patience," agreed Monkey-man. His gaze stayed on Kurama, a weight. Kurama didn't so much as blink. The Monkey-man's tone body language always shifted a little when directed at Kurama, a little more calculated, a little more contemplative. Heavier than the light-hearted indulgence the spawn garnered.  "Is the material still not of interest to you?"

"Not particularly."

"The offer for a third or even fourth year placement is open."

"Mmm."

Monkey-man blew out a grey, wisping ring of smoke. Cedar. Jasmine. The tip of a bone-white pipe. "Do you not want to be a ninja, Menma-kun?"

Kurama had been asked this question before.

In May, he'd said no. He'd said: _I want to be a ninja,_ because he had appearances to keep up. He still had appearances to keep up. It had barely been four months ago, that conversation; four months should not have felt like such a long time. Kurama figured that it was a by-product of all the Uchiha interruptions, making him undulate between high-strung nerves and explosive rage -- neither of which could be physically expressed -- and the other end of the extreme that came with such emotional exertion: apathy. There had been a lot of Uchiha interruptions. Hence, a lot of switching. When his garbage shell was smaller, it used shut off automatically before Kurama tipped over that particular cliff, bye bye world, hello sleep. Now he just felt tired. It was quite terrible. His stupid, human neuron connected brain kept translating "tired" to "despondency and an inability to do productive work" and also "I want my father and my idiot siblings like a child barely out infancy," neither of whom were here nor there, and altogether the experience was debilitating and humiliating when Kurama got full control of his mental functions back. 

Red-bean paste tasted suddenly sour in his mouth. Kurama turned his cup neatly while he considered the Monkey-man. The Monkey-man considered him. It was Sunday and Kurama would be resentful at the sunlight if he could dreg up the energy to be; it was too bright, it hurt his eyes. He didn't get enough sleep last night and a perpetual migraine lingered at the edges of his vision. October tenth was coming. On Friday Uchiha Mikoto had sent a lunch box full of daifuku, namagashi, and Taiyaki stuffed with unconventional strawberry-chocolate filling, all unfortunately Uzumaki Kushina's favourites, all of which Kurama had realized, with no small amount of horror, were somehow  _his_ favourites.

And that had been his emotional reservoirs for the week all dried up.

"Not particularly," said Kurama. "I'd prefer being a baker. Or a glass blower."

Actually, he wanted to be five hundred feet tall again. But bakers and glassblowers were acceptable proffesions under the umbrella of "human."

Basically: anything but a ninja.

"Rama's good at baking," said the spawn, and turned brightly. "You can be a ninja-baker!"

Kurama flicked red-bean paste at the spawn's nose. "Remove the ninja and we'll be good."

"You want to go to the civilian trade schools then?" the Monkey-man asked. No Kurama didn't, but in comparison to the Academy, he would certainly be more _willing_ to go. The Monkey-man looked visibly contemplative, but not in a "this child is the Kyuubi-no-Kitsune" kind of contemplative, which Kurama had grown to realize was actually out of the realms of most ninja-imaginations. Hopefully it would stay out of Uchiha imaginations for as long as possible.

Kurama shrugged in response. "I suppose."

"Your stipend isn't enough to cover for it," said the Monkey-man, as if this blasted village would allow it to be an option at all. 

"Mmm," Kurama said.

This was not keeping up appearances.

He was tired of keeping up appearances.  The thing was, Kurama wasn't even _good_ at keeping up appearances. The Academy was tedious with larval-children and rage-inducing with its teachings so Kurama didn't go. For some deranged reason in his toddler years he'd thought it was a good -- or at least a more bearable than the alternative idea -- to tell the spawn his real name and let him parrot it to the world instead of sticking with Menma. Anger came in high tides. It dragged down logic kicking and screaming every single time. Kurama knew he had more discipline than this. He had not lived two thousand years without cultivating any. But apparently when applied through a human-child brain with it's human-child impulses, the only results that cultivation had were wild mood swings and biting and the inability to think half a step into the future the moment a chance for instant gratification presented itself.

One thing about hitting rock bottom in emotional reserves was that it allowed for some ruthless self-reflection.

The spawn made an aggrieved noise. "T's like a said.  _Ninja-baker_. We can be super-duper ninjas together, and then I'll take over Ichiraku's and you can open a shop like Uncle Tetsu's cheesecake place."

"You'll just eat all the ramen you cook," Kurama muttered.

"No I _won't_. I'll have figured out a ramen-no-jutsu by them, so there'll be enough for me _and_ the customers."

The Monkey-man swooped in and diverted that topic before it could be pursued any further. "I'm sure that will be well within your capabilities, Naruto-kun," he said wryly. "And Menma-kun, do consider it again. The class size has been reduced from thirty to twelve, which should address your previous complaint on your teachers not having enough focus on individuals, and Miozumi-sensei is quite excellent at advance concepts."

This was not the Monkey-man asking, not really.

Kurama's name was not Menma.

"I'll think about it."

Kurama wasn't keeping up appearances, but he also wasn't going on a screaming rampage and shouting out blistering curses, so maybe he was keeping up appearances after all. Or maybe not.  Trying to figure out that train of introspection was stupid. He cut it off. One thing was certain though: his headache was still there and he wanted to be out of the office, in bed, curtains drawn, and drinking hot coco to soothe the dumb thing. He had no energy for either violence or profanity at the moment. 

Well no. That wasn't quite true. Kurama always had energy for violence and profanity, but these days they came more in habit than genuine emotion.

"Try, Menma-kun," repeated the Monkey-man.

 

* * *

 A week and a half past where Kurama ignored the Monkey-man's attempt to get him into the Academy. There were things to be done in that time: a seal that needed to be cracked, other seals that needed to be made, trade routes that had to be considered, geography to be studied. Kurama did exactly none of those things. He sat under the covers instead, reading his anthologies, and stayed there unless it was to remove himself for hot cocoa or soup. He ate minimally -- no appetite -- and generally felt the urge to do something but was unable to act on said urge apart from tossing randomly.

He slept a lot.

He avoided mirrors. 

Sometimes he missed a step, and from the bathroom counter or the past the shoe-rack at the front stared back Uzumaki Kushina's pre-pubescent self: violet eyed, messy fringed, with hair cropped to the chin. Skinny. Lips pursed grimly. The shell looked exactly like her, a carbon copy. Almost six years and he was still stuck within it. He was still stuck in this village. These days, Kurama wondered if he would be stuck for the rest of his years. Just -- not even in the shell. The shell would break down, the shell was already breaking down for Father's sake, with its endless supply of pains. But stuck chained in human subservice, like all his siblings were.

It was a grim thought. It was a grim week.

And at the end of it lay October tenth. Six years later, and Kurama had come full circle again.

Outside laid the dark night. Street lamps glowed, lanterns floated gently in the breeze, strung up parallel to the washing and electric lines. Kurama's breath fogged the glass. He wiped his hand across condensation, looking through and out. Eighty thousand pin-prick signitures melded into a shining sea. Today all of Konohagakure had flooded out of their homes and into the market for the Festival.

Kurama sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed connecting with the wall in a yukata: red, with white trim and a gold-white koi printed across his back. Two steps away Dog-brat was trying to wriggle the spawn into equally eye-searing clothes. The spawn's yukata was a deep orange. Sunflowers unfurled pale yellow at his sleeves and color. His sash was dark brown.

"Hurry up hurry up hurry up!" The spawn batted away Dog-brat's hands as he tried to adjusted the spawn's very orange collar. "Inu we're gonna be _late_!"

"You can't be late to a festival," said Dog-brat.

"Yeah we can! We're gonna miss the _fireworks."_

"You're not going to miss the fireworks," said Dog-brat with patience.

Collar adjusted, Dog-brat handed the spawn a festival mask. It was cheap plastic, painted green with the face of a cartoon frog, and cut abruptly to leave the lower half of the face visible. An equally cheap and plastic cat mask sat in Kurama's lap, drawn in brown lines. In lieu of his usual ANBU issued, Dog-brat had on his face a caricature of a plump shopkeeper woman with her eyes closed in a sheepish smile. For once he was in neither armor nor underpinnings. He wore a grey yukata striped softly in silver.

The spawn snapped his mask onto one side of his head and let out a noise of triumph. He looked ridiculous. The Dog-brat looked even more ridiculous, with the woman in place of his face and his hair, as always, attempting to imitate a silvery rat's nest.

Kurama contemplated the lantern lights. He said, a little distantly: "I don't suppose you'd let me stay inside in peace."

"No _way_ ," responded the spawn, doing a cheerful twirl in front of the mirror. He adjusted his mask, and blue peeked out of the frog's eye holes.

Outside laid cold, crisp air. Llanterns shone in a golden stream and human-chakra signatures pulsed in tandem, fireflies gathered in a ribbon of winding light. Crackling at the forefront of Kurama's chakra sense was celebration and joy and young delight twisted through strands of old grief and bitterness. This was the second Hero's festival. Just as well, the Monkey-man had barred Kurama and the spawn -- mainly the spawn -- from attending the first. Kurama put on his mask as they entered the main market. The crowd was dressed in bright yukatas and lively masks; the wooden stalls were garnished in color; the air smelled like smoke, and heat, and burnt sugar.

Six years from October tenth and the humans had taken from that day of damnation a celebration for their dead.

Kurama stood amongst them. The spawn was there, unfortunately and always at Kurama's side, and he was too many representations stuffed into the body of a boy that only wanted the world to love him. To his left, Dog-brat was an arc of static electricity. These days Kurama barely felt an iota of sharingan induced, eye-clawing impulse within his presence.

The spawn had a grip like a meat grinder. The Dog-brat's chakra crackled amusement.

Festival lanterns were shining and the air was a rainfall of joy and light; two little human brats crouched next to a shallow basin trying to scoop goldfish out with flimsy paper nets; a line winded around the Taiyaki stand; couples walked, meandering and languid, holding little boats of takoyaki and candy apples speared on a stick.

Kurama took deep breaths on reflex, counting backwards starting from ten. There was no need: the knee-jerk, vicious anger never came. Startling. He surveyed them, those tiny humans, bigger than Kurama in his current form. Moving on with their lives. Happy. He surveyed them and there was no anger and no violence but certainly no joy. He breathed in. Nothing. He breathed out. Nothing. He touched a hand to his chest.

Just as well. 

The last festival Kurama had attended had been five hundred years ago, in his honor, and the little humans had poured a warehouse of sake into an overflowing basin and carved up ten of their best cows and insisted on dressing him up appropriately (with much demurement on how he was perfectly dignified as he currently was, of course, but the addition of this and that would make him even more so). They tied long, tinkling strings of glass around his wrists, draped a embroidered sheet over his shoulders. Gold and white and red. Children smeared paint over his tails, under his eyes. The air had felt been a rainfall of joy and light, and it had been a harvest celebration that lasted three days and three nights of drinking and laughing and a few very determined artisans attempting to mural Kurama's tails. After it finished, he'd trundled five hundred miles west to Shukaku and made a very sincere attempt at Bijuu-damaing him into a canyon when his brother actually knocked himself over laughing and wheezing: "Awww! Look at you, all dressed up. Hey Kurama, who's the lucky girl? As eldest I have--" and then he went flying.

Father had taught manners in theory; in practice between siblings they worked less well, because all of Kurama's siblings were shitheads.

Kurama had known that tribe for a very, very long time. They were gone now. 

His siblings weren't here. Father wasn't here. 

It was too loud.

He wanted, acutely but distantly, to go back and sleep.

Instead, because the spawn was a shithead and arguing against him on certain topics was ultimately futile, Kurama was getting dragged this way and that way in an attempt to try fifty games and fifty foodstalls all at the same time.

_There_ was the irritation.

It passed swiftly.

Dog-brat was paying for everything, and the spawn capitlized furiously by getting multiples of whatever food the stalls were selling in his radius. Candy apples and floss pink mochi sprinkled with ground nut and powdered sugar, a styrofoam carton of yakisoba times two, Yakitori drizzled in chili sauce, choco-banana sticks, which he handed promptly to Kurama. Then he went on his quest of trying and failing every arcade game there was, with Dog-brat generously making up for the inadequacy by netting half a dozen stuffed toys.

They met the much-babbled about Inuzuka Kiba at Gold-fish scooping.

He was crouched in front of the shallow wooden basin, bowl in hand, paper net in the other, eyes nearly crossed in concentration, festival mask turned sideways so to show his face. An older girl in a purple kimono leaned propped against the stall eating grilled squid. They smelt of fire-earth. Dog. The musk of leaves in fall. The same triangles were on their cheeks, red and inverted.

The spawn skidded to a halt. 

"KIBA!" He hollered, establishing that this was, in fact, the Inuzuka in question.

Inuzuka Kiba turned with broken fish net in hand. "Uzumaki!" He grinned. He and the spawn were on the same decibel levels.

"Kiba Kiba this is Kurama," said the spawn, and thrust Kurama forward.

"You _suck_ ," said Kurama, stumbling.

The girl in purple clucked her tongue. "That's the universal agreement on siblings."

Dog-brat number two scrutized him, and it was, Kurama thought, a great deal like that first time with Uchiha-brat, except this one was not, in fact, an Uchiha.

"Cool," he decided, and then, in the way of small children and self-interest, turned back to the spawn launching a tale about the stupidity of paper nets in gold-fish scooping.

Thus, of course, the spawn had to try his hand at it for himself. He bore the same results as dog-brat-nmber-two, which is to say, he contributed a dozen more nets to the alreayd littered dozen on the dirt. 'This _is_ dumb," he said in agreement to Dog-brat-number-two's views, tongue poking out, trying to herd a fish into his bowl and failing epically. 

"Like I said," said dog-brat-number-two.

"You're just both terrible at it," the girl in purple snorted. "Also, I don't care if I'm supposed to be babysitting. We have until the fireworks until mom wants us back. If I have to spend one more minute--"

There was a crack like thunder. 

Fireworks bloomed above their heads, red and yellow and blue and green, throwing shadows onto the rock faces. 

The girl in purple looked up. Dog-brat-number-two looked up. Pale light refracted off their white masks and cast strange colours over their face. The spawn's eyes were as wide as plates, his mouth open in a little "o" of wonder, face tilted to the sky.

"... Shit," swore the girl in purple.

Dog-brat-number-two grimly agreed. "Mom's gonna _kill_ us."

* * *

 And then the lanterns rose. 

* * *

The lanterns rose in a thousand pinpricks of golden light, up and up like stars. Some sea of them, their pale paper skins shining with bonfire warmth. They were white and they were red and they were blue and they were patterned, and all of them had names, kanji too small for Kurama's sight hand-scrawled on their paper sides, some thousand names for some thousand lanterns for some thousand souls, written by the ones that remain. At Obon lantern boats floated down the eddies of the Naka River. On Hero's day they were sent rising,  with a name as an anchor and a flame to illuminate the path to the Pure Land. 

Dog-brat-number-two and his sister were gone, scrambling off before their chances of death by maternal disapproval could be amplified. The fireworks had flashed, once, twice, five times. Then the first lantern, like a lone, flagging bird in the wind, drifting above the rooftops.

Then another. And another. 

Until there was a sea.

Dog-brat had four lanterns. Kurama had no idea where he kept them, only that they were now laid out neatly at Dog-brat's feet. They were plain, and white. He perched one into Kurama's hands, then another into the spawn's. It had no heft 

"Who's this for?" asked the spawn, tilting his head.

Dog-brat didn't answer.

He wrapped a knuckle against the lanturn side, and from within a flame bloomed.

They rose, the two lanterns and then the two at Dog-brat's feet, to join the parade in the sky. Kurama caught the edges of the characters. The top bit of _Uzumaki,_ the Kanji for _Kushina_ , on paper skin rising from his hands. It was a bitter irony. He breathed in the chill air, and let out an exhale that steamed.

He felt.

He didn't know what he felt. 

He was angry. He was not angry. Hot, then cold, except Kurama had never run cold in his life He raised a hand as if to touch the paper skin, did not, and instead let the breeze carry it gently away. The fireworks were ongoing in the background. They were loud. The lanterns were bright. The chakra of joy rolled over him in a gentle tide. There was a distance, maybe, between himself and current affairs, but maybe it was the opposite, maybe there was no distance, because he wasn't angry right now and objects did not become symbols until a meaning was placed onto them. He felt clinical and very in control and a little hollowed. Coals sweeped over in hearth ash. The wind blew in his face. His yutaka wasn't thick enough to ward off the chill. His feet hurt, a little, from being pushed stall to stall. Dog brat and the spawn were both at Kurama's left. None of these sensations registered as prevalent or present. 

There was a numbness in him, some gaping emptiness, that was dark, and black, but temptingly soft. For some reason it reminded him of standing in the middle of endless canyons, that feeling. It had been years and years ago, when he hadn't yet gotten used to the loneliness that came with his siblings scattered. Back then Kurama had stood in the middle of sand and sky and air that echoed, and felt like a stone sinking. A stone, hidden and unremembered amongst the sand, even by itself. He'd felt like a lark tossed up into the great blue void of the sky, so small, a dot against the sun. He'd felt like a bit of driftwood on an crest of a wave, no destination in sight, pulled by currents far far beyond his control. 

And the sky had been blue, and he could have lost himself to it, that endless lolling lack of anything but air and sand and sky, and he wanted to loose himself to it, now, the comforting dark. He wanted to sleep, and sleep, and not wake up. He would wake only when spring came again and the trees sung him a song wreathed in his own chakra.

Six years should not have felt like an eon. 

He _needed_ to open that seal.


	12. Betweens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of aftermaths and interventions.

Dog-brat brought them back to their apartment with the spawn tucked carefully in the fold of his elbow: the spawn's arms latched around his neck, the spawn's mouth still sticky with the burnt sugar from the candied apples and the sweet sauce from the takoyaki balls. At his side, Kurama's short legs gave way to equally short steps. It was a slow walk. Dog -brat, because he knew well enough Kurama would in no way succumb to the indignity of being carried, matched his stride.

Frantic blinking kept Kurama's eyes open. The lights fuzzed at the edges of his vision. They were still numerous, beyond the usual streetlamps. Lanterns hung from clotheslines and door handles, perched on porch fronts, red and yellow paper that gleamed on dwindling candle sticks. 

Down the street, past the closed corner store, up the stone steps of the apartment building, to door _115_ where Kurama tried to fish the house key from under the hideous welcome-mat but fumbled it with abruptly clumsy fingers. It didn't hit the ground. Dog-brat plucked it from the air before it could. He slotted the key into the lock with the hand not holding the spawn's weight, and took off his shoes at the entrance. 

Inside was silent, apart from the electric hum of the old fridge and Kurama's own muffled footsteps on the wood. No one switched on the lights. The curtains were open though, and there was enough illumination to see by. Kurama watched Dog-brat swerve into the little hallway connecting the private rooms from the living area, likely to put the spawn to bed. 

Kurama's feet hurt. Ow. He sat on the couch. 

It was barely a minute before Dog-brat's signature bobbed back out, into the living room. His silhouette was murky in the dimness, his hair shading some dull silver from the little ambience.  He'd pushed his festival mask to one side and his chakra was shading towards a calm that Kurama never felt from Dog-brat, who was a erratic sparkler of nausea and regret on his best days.

Dog-brat stared at him.

Kurama stared back. 

"You should be sleeping."

It was a statememnt. Dog-brat talked in those, when he bothered to talk at all. 

Exhaustion dragged at Kurama's eyelids. He kept them stubbornly open. "I'll do that when I want to."

"Mmm."

Kurama was great at ending conversations, Dog-brat was not great at continuing them, at least, not with Kurama, and Dog-brat always, always broke eye contact first. Kurama listened to him ghost into the kitchen, open the fridge, and then the rustling of styrofoam and plastic bags as unfinished takeout was stuffed onto the shelves. He left as he usually did, with a silent hop out a living room window that shut itself shortly afterwards.

Kurama breathed out. 

He felt the culminated aches of the day. They pounded at his jaw and through the thin skin and bone of his shell's temple. They also seemed incredibly determined to seal Kurama's eyelids over his eyeballs, so just to be contrary he kept them stubbornly open.  His hands shook, a little. That wasn't due to the exhaustion. That might be due to the exhaustion, it was kind of uncertain. His mind was running loops in overdrive and he wasn't sure why. What was it —  was it the fear or was it the anxiety or was it the calm. Was it all three blended together, thawing out and digging in claws that stung now that there was no anger to tramp them down. And Kurama hated it, that he had such feelings, that he was being made to feel such things, but like most everything else it was a distant anger. He had more important problems. 

The clock read: 3:10. Kurama was tired and resentful, and this was bound to make him even more resentful, but he still filched his notebooks from the bathroom cupboard. He picked his way back to the living room tabled and kneeled in front of fit, festival Yutaka dragging against hardwood floors. 

Here was how he pieces went, like this:

Three by three grid, white paper, black ink, ruthless geometric precision. Altogether there was a total of nine. Nine seal components and thus nine sheets, arranged corner to corner. They made perfect sense when broken up. _Here,_ on the upper left, the chakra-bindings. _Here,_ on the lower right, the amplification. _Here,_ at the upper right, the yin-yang balancer. _Here_ , in between, little brushstrokes that regulated circulation, cycling the minimal chakra needed to power the seal. 

Overlap the components just so until they mirrored the original smacked over Kurama's navel, and all that sense disintegrated. The amplifier dropped itself over the balancer; the circulation network _twisted_ ; and the chakra bindings found themselves in the lowest level, crammed next to the command matrix. 

Kurama stared at the seal and tried to force sense from sheer power of will.

It didn't work. It never worked. 

His eyes itched. The clock ticked. He could hear the spawn snoring. 

Eventually, he put the seal away. Kurama was colossally unsurprised to see characters swimming through the edges of his vision every time he blinked.

Three, nearly four in the morning was a strange place. The fine blanket of exhaustion had settled like a forgotten weight, unnoticeable when he wasn't paying attention but unbalancing when he was. There was still the glow of firelight through the curtains. Kurama piled blankets over his lap, twisting his fingers through fabric.

He closed his eyes, briefly, and didn't know when he fell asleep. 

* * *

He awoke to the distinct sound of something shattering.

"Oh, _shoot_." said the spawn. 

"Whaf," said Kurama, which was a too-early-for life version of _what-is-happening._

He rolled over. He didn't get very far before lack of energy failed him, still three quarters stuck in a dream. It took a few more moments of profuse swearing from the spawn's direction, and then a blur darting past to the corner of the living room in a dive for the dust pan, before Kurama slowly fought back the blankets and pushed himself up against the armrest. He squinted at the clock. Five thirty in the afternoon of the next day. A reddish glow sliced through now-open curtains to cut a neat square across the floor and the stripes of Kurama's blankets. 

Ceramic tinkled. 

"That had _better_ not be the teapot," muttered Kurama. 

"It ain't!" 

The spawn was allotted limited time in the kitchen for a lot of reasons, his lack of culinary talent being one of them and his perchance for knocking things over being another. Kurama dragged himself out of the warmth, made sure nothing important had been broken —it was only a plate —and then chucked both spawn and dustpan outside once the mess was cleaned up. The next few actions were automatic. He was not properly awake and he didn't need to be for food. Tea was first. Insert leaves, boil water. Both he and the spawn took it exactly one way, which was to say with enough sugar and milk to taste of the convenience store bubble _-_ teas, so Kurama doused two mugs accordingly and then hauled out whatever leftovers Dog-brat had left last night. 

Kurama drank his tea, ate cold miso glazed trout, and listened to not one word of the spawn babbling about all the things they did at the festival. Then it was six and the dishes were in the sink and the spawn was in the bath, and when his surroundings seemed to finally loose their perhiphery fuzziness to register as reality, Kurama was halfway done his third cup of tea. 

He stared at it. 

The steam curled around his fingers. 

He remembered last night. The memory felt stretched. Disjointed. It felt like a dream, a little. Strange. Too-bright lights against too stark contrasts. And he'd been —present. And he'd been—A spectator. Trapped. That was nothing new. 

But he'd also been so cold it felt like he was numb with it. The lanterns and the sound and the outside sensation. It'd not gone away. He wanted it to go away. He didn't want it to go away. He stared at his tea and wondered idly if he could just walk out of Konohagakure's village gates. 

He couldn't, obviously. It'd never work. But thought of doing it —

Was stupid. That was what it was.

Pretty horrifically stupid.

Looking into the green dregs of his tea, Kurama wondered, in an annoyed sort of way, if his shell was ill again.

Illness was something that befell the shell with appalling frequency. And sometimes Kurama thought strange things when it did. Last winter there was a two day stretch when he'd been so delirious with fever that the thought of cajoling the seal's secrets out of the Monkey-man with pork ramen made good sense. What he had right now was obviously not a fever. Kurama would not have been able to walk in a straight line otherwise. But there were symptoms that cross-referenced:  lethargy and an inability to get out of bed, the headaches, the occasional delirium. It was that time of year too, in the transition between fall and winter. Just because Kurama wasn't sniffling didn't mean he wasn't ill again. Tthere were so _many_ strangediseases humans seemed suspectible to -- autoimmune and bacteria and viral and just a plain cold --  that it was strange their population had survived at all, in their squishy little meatsacks. Kurama's personal squishy little meatsack did not help things. It had poor circulation and weak lungs and a disaster of a chakra-system. The spawn had none of these, presumably because the spawn's meatsack had been churned out the natural way. 

The shell being ill usually meant a few terrible weeks before Kurama got better.

He glanced at the calender. It really was that time of year. What Kurama usually caught was a viscous cold -- always a different strain but still under the category of "cold" -- with one memorable winter week of pneumonia added to the mix. By now he was very unfortunately intimate with the long bullet-points needed for the quickest recovery.

That was --Fine. He could deal with the shell being itself. And there was really no explanation but the shell, when he thought about it, because he'd lived two thousand years and he'd never had this kind of... whatever the hell it was before. 

Diseases went away.

Kurama traced the rim of his mug with a thumbnail. 

It would get better.

* * *

 

It didn't really get better.

Some days were good and productive, and Kurama went along plotting and eating and getting occasionally dragged by the spawn through the streets in wild goose chases as the temperature dropped and the leaves withered. Other days were... not. He'd wake up and sit in bed and stare at the covers and want nothing more than to do nothing, nothing at all, as if there was cement in his blood and thus the process of moving was some ardurous, insurmountable task. Those days, he'd sit on the couch, the floor, the balcony. He'd stare at the cieling stains or the patterns on the duvet or nothing at all, some blank patch of space above a Konohagakure spread in miniature beyond him, and lose actual hours that way.

Kurama drank a lot of tea and got a lot of sleep and made sure to bundle in layers. 

It _really_ didn't get better.

_Zoning_ was apparently one of the symptoms, which was ridiculous, but also in practice it seemed to be the most prevelant one beyond _thinking._ If he wasn't zoning out he was thinking, and if he wasn't thinking it was because there were distractions that kept him from doing so. The same train of thought came at the heels of one another like an unending loop. Mostly this involved the stupid seal and the ticking time constraints and the complete and utter unacceptability of Kurama being stuck. Except it'd been actual years and years and _what if he was going to be stuck like this?_ Running the question through and through his skull was just -- paralyzing. He could not be stuck like this. He could not.  And once the spiral got going, once Kurama began to consider how all these unwanted outcomes were unfortunately not at all impossible, then he'd wedged himself in a space that was hard to get hauled out from.

The spawn was a good distraction.

It was better when there were others. They were -- distracting. When they were present Kurama had to focus on them. Old habits and feelings snapped into place; most of those feelings were a  mild irritation. The anger spectrum was a familliar friend. Kurama was good at latching onto those feeling and burning them for fuel.

Some days were good days. It helped when he went outside. 

He went to the library for the medical disease lists and came out with those plus an anatomy textbook. That didn't really help either, because they told him exactly nothing. Diseases were numerous and symptoms overlapped. At one point he actually wondered if he had whatever cancer, because if if anything could rapidly mutate it was Kushina's patch-job shell creation. But. No. He wasn't actually physically debeliated in any way. Nothing hurt and he'd not smacked his head and sometimes he missed meals but his overall weight wasn't shifting. He read up a little on neurology though. Thinking and zoning out _were_ the main problems. Afterwards he wish he'd not done that, since learning the primary human sensory and information proccesing organ was apparently made from jelly water and protein inspired exactly zero amounts of optimism.

... Jelly water and protein. Seriously. What the _hell._

And the spawn did, eventually, notice.

He came back early one afternoon, early enough that he'd either skipped his afternoon classes or not gone to the Academy at all, and crawled onto the covers to shake Kurama's shoulder.

"Rama, wakey wake! I got you chocolate cake!"

Kurama flopped over onto his side. The spawn's eyes were an inch from his face. He grinned, when Kurama squinted and made an irritated questioning noise. The lights were off but there was enough daylight to see by, and the spawn was in a grey sweater and a still-knotted scarf. He hefted up a white carton and rattled it. The scent of chocolate and sugar wafted up.

Kurama blinked blearily. "You what?"

"Chocolate cake chocolate cake. Triple fudge and fresh!"

Kurama blinked some more,  and the spawn took this as an opportunity to explain himself.

"You've gone weird lately," the spawn said, with emphasis on weird. It came out as:  _weeeird._  He flopped into a curl next to Kurama's side, and chakra emitted from him like heat from summer asphault. "I was gonna take you to prank dumbo-Hideki-sensei, since that always makes _me_ feel better, but then I asked Chouji. And he said if you were feeling bad I should get you food, and I asked Shika the same thing and he did that noise where he agreed, so I went candy shopping before then I remembered Aunti Akimichi was making these new cakes, and I told her you were feeling bad and she gave me one free." He frowned, as Kurama reached sideways to flail one hand across the cakebox. "You didn't tell me you were feeling bad. Are you feeling _really_ bad? Do we need that syrup thingy again?"

He looked at Kurama imploringly.

"I don't have a cold," said Kurama. He peeled the carton lid open. 

The spawn made an assenting noise. "Yeah. T's what I thought! You get mad whenever you get a cold. But you're not mad! And you're quiet. It's _weird."_

The cake was chocolate, in a white ceramic mug. A dollop of fresh cream sat lopsided at it's peak. It was still warm. Kurama picked up the little plastic fork wedged between the carton folds. The spawn opened his mouth again, and Kurama speared a neatly quartered slice of cake and stuck it into the spawn's mouth.

"I'm not hungry," said Kurama, as the spawn looked crosseyed down at the fork in bafflement.

"You... don't want cake?"

"No?"

"Really really?"

"Yes."

The spawn looked at him with an expression equivalent to the time he'd spilled a bowl of freshly steaming, completely untouched bowl of noodles into the dirt. There was a certain ratio of horror to bewilderment. Lurching forward, he gripped Kurama by the shoulders. If he hadn't been in Kurama's nonexistent personal space before he certainly was now.

"Rama you always want cake! What do you mean you don't want cake? Did... something bad happen? What do I beat up. Did the librarian lady kick you out of the library?  Is that why you're all like this? I can totally beat her up!"

Kurama wondered if the spawn remembered the last fight he'd picked with the old woman. Epic failiure was one way to describe it.

"Don't beat up the librarian."

The spawn gripped his arm. "Are you sure?"

"Completely and utterly." Kurama said flatly.

He looked uncertain."Fine. No library lady. But... " his voice shushed into the tone of a whisper. "Rama Rama. Did something bad happen?"

Kurama made a feeling gesture at the ceiling with his fork. "Only all the absurdities in the Universe." Then he dumped the remainder of the cake into the spawn's mouth, which gave him approximately 0.2 seconds of silence. The spawn looked at him with the indignity of a squirrel that had fallen off a high place. "Rama!"

"Yes," he said.

The spawn head-butted him.

Blue duvet covers poofed. Kurama's elbow knocked against a pillow. "Ow."

"That's what you get," said the spawn imperiously. He knocked his forehead against the bony angle of Kurama's shoulder, glancing up slit-eyed and scowling. "You're not telling me things. You have to tell me things! Especially if something bad happens! then I can beat whatever it is up and we can eat ramen and it'll all be okay." 

Kurama rolled his eyes. "With your nonexistent muscles?"

"I am in _ninja school_ ," the spawn emphasized, and curled a bicep. "I have too muscles." All two seconds, he seemed offended by the remark. But then his arms flopped to his side, and his expression turned. It wasn't an unfamiliar expression, but it wasn't one of recent memories either: lip jutting and brows furrowed, which -- yes, that was where Kurama had seen in. Toddlerhood recollections of the spawn screaming whenever Kurama wasn't in touching range, being such a brat. He put his head into the crook of Kurama's neck, and said, quietly. "But Rama. You have to -- you have to promise to tell me okay?"

A clock ticked.

It was the kind of thing that needed to be laughed at, in a mean and slightly vicious way, but Kurama was not, these days, in much of a laughing mood. He didn't answer. He never answered. "You dumbo," the spawn tacked on, as if in afterthought. He brought his arms up and wrapped them around Kurama's shoulders in a octopus grip, as if he were two again and incapable of being seperated from Kurama's person for more than five minutes at a time. He was very, very warm.

Then he proceeded to fall asleep and drool all over the front of Kurama's shirt, which ended whatever lapse of judgment Kurama was having. Kurama let him faceplant into the covers and got up to get tea.

The next day, the spawn dragged Kurama out to the Noodle-man's.

Amazing amounts of pork ramen dissapeared into the spawn's stomach while Noodle-man piled Kurama with sweets and little cubes of fried yam. When they were done the spawn described in detail his newest plan to turn Senju Hashirama's face into a Geisha painting.  As it turned out, he was not the only one attempting intervention. That afternoon Dog-brat came through the balcony with an entire kotatsu slung over his shoulder, looking a little beraggled at the edges and still smelling of disinfectant. They ate a dinner of takeout: broiled pork belly and tempura and three katsudon bowls. Kurama peeled satsumas for desert as the spawn and Dog-brat retired the old coffee table in exchange for the Kotatsu. 

The day after that, the Monkey-man payed Kurama a home visit. 

The spawn was _really_ not the only intervention attempt. Kurama was also going to strangle him, because evidently someone had blabbed.

Kotatsus were a godsend, and Kurama was very engrossed in this new and shiny place to nap when the knock came. The duvet was orange. Yellow chrysanthemums were inked into dark squares patterns. It was delightfully warm and capturing his attention quite fully. And the Monkey-man had a key. If he wanted in he could do so himself. 

It took two minutes. The lock rattled. Chakra, a little like simmering hotpot, entered through the front door.

"Menma-kun," said the Monkey-man, removing his shoes. He was for once not wearing that stupidly garish hat, instead only his red robes and white overcoat. Kurama, because he was feeling slightly cheery now that there was something new to poke at, lobbed an acknowledging noise back. 

He should've known better than to be generous; the Monkey-man once again attempted to bridge the topic of the Academy. That was not a conversation that got anywhere, ever. 

"I already said no," said Kurama.

"You've not been healthy lately," the Monkey-man said, slowly and steadily. "And at your age, being by yourself is — "

"I already _said_ — "

"I remember your views Menma-kun."

"Can we get to the point."

"The Academy will be good for you. Naruot-kun praises it highly, and he's happy with the other children. I know you are skeptical but I want you to _try,_ Menma-kun."

"I don't _want to try_."

Visciously, Kurama dug his fingernails into a satsuma peel. He'd almost forgotten it, this anger. And maybe it was just an imitation of former rage, habit against this question, but it felt hot and real in his ears. For one glorious moment he couldn't think past beyond that static rush of _that would mean giving in are you kidding me not in a million years_.  Kurama was in his element. 

Then the Monkey-man said: "You are a ward of the state, Menma-kun."

"So _what,_ " said Kurama.

* * *

 

Apparently, though, the Monkey-man was finally pulling out his cards.

The end result was this:

Kurama would go three days out of the usual five. He could skip out on the weekend conditioning if he wanted, and of course if he wished to move up a grade he was free to do so. It was a trial run, the Monkey-man assured him, while Kurama was still blinking past the outrage and disbeleif. But he needed to try. He was being forced to try, in fact. Apparently Dog-brat would deposit him in his chair every morning if he had to. 

_"What,_ " said Kurama.

"You can borrow some of Naruto-kun's stationary, though I'm informed you have much of your own," said the Monkey-man. He drained the rest of his tea, looking completely unrepentant concerning what exactly he'd just done. "I've arranged with Miozumi-sensei for you to be there on Monday the eighth. I think Naruto-kun will enjoying introducing you to his friends."

There were so many things wrong with that sentence Kurama could not pinpoint everything at once. While he was floundering, the Monkey-man reached into his robes, pulled out a metallic carton of cookies and settled it on the Kotatsu top. That was not even near an equivalent peace offering. 

"I think you'll look forward to it, Menma-kun," he said. 

And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... three months later! Hi!
> 
> School was the main culprit for this chapter's lateness, but this was a hard chapter in general. Kurama's state of mind made it difficult to write, and when I did write I wasn't sure I was conveying that state of mind properly. This was in addition to how tedious the itself chapter felt: I felt like i was repeating things -- relationships, events -- already established. But I also knew I needed those scenes to transition into the next chapter (which should've been the latter half of this chapter but it kind of... expanded) where the actual plot developments happen. Eventually I just went, "screw it!" and wrote the thing. I'm not sure if it's the best work I've done but at least it's out now! ... Post first, edit later is basically my motto.
> 
> Edit: 26/02 - so this is why I shouldn't post when I just finished writing 4k and am sleep deprived. Ideas are okay, execution not so. On the other hand I'm still sleep-deprived so I'll see how much I like this revised chapter tommorow lol.


	13. Breakthrough

The next week Kurama found himself working through a tunnel vision of rage.

Ironically, this was the push he needed to stop wallowing in that loop of insidious breakdowns. He had things to do. They were important and needed to be done, and he still _could not_ believe the Monkey-man had just dropped him back into the Academy. The spawn was ecstatic with joy. Kurama was not. He took his anger out on the many, many maps that needed to be cross-referenced.

As always, the library served as his main reservoir for resources. Armed with reams of paper, Kurama checked the ANBU were loitering outside in the trees before he smoothed out the maps and began almost feverishly tracing out roads. There was Point A and Point B. Point A was Konohagakure. Point B was Wind. The logistics between the two went as such: Six hundred miles to the Wind border in a straight line, a few hundred more if Kurama wanted to get to her heartlands. It was the closest location that fulfilled all of Kurama's requirements: isolated from Konoha patrols, isolated in general, a good few days beyond Konoha even at a ninja pace.

Six hundred miles left a lot up in the air. The week passed quickly.

Too soon it was Monday, the eighth, and Dog-brat was an uncomfortable presence at the breakfast table. At 8: 00 exactly Kurama found himself herded out the front door, zipped up in a parker, a thick scarf, and cheap worn running shoes. Outside the leaves were dead and the sky was gray. November air flaked ice against Kurama's cheeks. At 8:20, he and the spawn were in the building, hanging up their coats in the racks opposite the classroom.

Miozumi Misa was a green haired Kunoichi with a loud voice and a small classroom. The classroom was colour-coded to the tastes of small children. It had pastel walls, laminated maps, and brightly printed posters of human pressure points and other whatnots. There were only ten desks, arranged in a semi-circle. Kurama's was apparently conjoined with the spawn's.

There was an introduction. Eight other tiny, larval staged humans stared at him and whispered occasionally.

Then Kurama dropped into his assigned seat, put his head down, and set immediately onwards for naptime. He'd not woken before noon for a near year. He was four hours behind on sleep and nowhere near functioning capacity.

Miozumi Misa, however, as the spawn had greatly enthused, actually paid attention. This was not a blessing. An hour in he was prodded awake by the spawn to do _math problems._

Kurama blinked baffledly at the blackboard.

"Menma-kun," said Miozumi. She gestured at a tray of chalk sitting at her desk. "Can you show us the answer to this question?"

Surroundings situation having finally solidified,  Kurama was automatically going to expel a judicious: "um, no," before he remembered the Monkey-man's completely unveiled threat of Dog-brat. Not that Dog-brat was that much of a threat, but the warning was there. Three days a week was bad enough. If the Monkey-man expanded his required Academy-time bracket it would probably send Kurama into an aneurysm. He wondered if there were rewards for good behavior. And then just as soon he wondered if he could set something on fire just to be contrary. He didn't want to be awarded for good behavior, he wanted out of this stupid institution. Then his eyelids attempted to glue themselves shut and he wondered if he answered the question the spawn would fucking quit poking him.

A quick chakra scan gave him Dog-brat's location. He was settled on a tree with a nice sightline of the windows.

Kurama debated with himself.

He _really really_ wanted to sleep.

Fine. Okay.

Answering the question took maybe five seconds. It was long division. He was not actually six. Whatever.

"Menma-kun," said Miozumi slowly, once he trudged back to his desk and collapsed. "what time did you go to bed last night?

"Laaate," said the spawn.

"Goodnight," Kurama said crankily, and put his head back to the desk.

This time, he didn't get disturbed again until it was actually noon.

It was the bell that woke him. He'd gotten so use to the spawn's incessant chatter over the years that nothing pitched below an actual scream would do the job. He blinked up to a scramble of children, scraping back chairs and fishing out bento boxes wrapped in patterned cloth, joining together into huddles at a few choice desks. Tongue out and wrangling with the inside of his desk, the spawn seemed to be doing the same, trying to heave out the stacked bentos he'd shoved in earlier in the morning. Dog-brat had gone to the convenience store to get those yesterday. The spawn had said he didn't need them, since apparently the Uchiha Mikoto lunch program was still up and running, which as a reminder only elevated Kurama's need for... non-Uchiha made lunch.

The bentos came out with a rattle.

"Great," said Kurama, and reached out, only for the spawn to swiftly retract them beyond his reach.

"We're not eating _her_ e," he said, in a tone that indicated this was information Kurama should have already known.

Kurama eyed him. "No?"

"No!" The spawn made a "you're being dumb today" noise. "You have to meet _everyone_ and they ain't in Mio-sensei's class. I've been telling them about you for _months._ "

For months the spawn had also been telling Kurama about them  Additional knowledge did nothing to increase Kurama's desire to meet the brat cohort. He rolled his eyes.  "They can keep on speculating. "Now give me my food."

"Rama you lump! We've been super excited for this!"

"I am perfectly content with my current seating arrangement," Kurama said archly.

The spawn's lip jutted out. "Fine," he said. "You called it."

Two seconds later, there was a moment of disorientation of being   _tackled,_ and then Kurama found himself blinking down at the floor— or maybe that was the ceiling? No it was the floor — as the spawn turned around the desk corner and rabbited out the door with Kurama slung over his shoulder.  "You little," he spluttered, "I am going to _rip your hair out let me down right now_ — fuck — no don't _turn._ " And the spawn was laughing gleefully, singing "nope nope I can't hear you Rama." They skidded down a hall and went right at the intersection, before barging through a classroom door that looked exactly liked every classroom door in the building.

"Guys this is Rama!" said the spawn, at the top of his lungs, as soon as they were spat inside.

Twenty five, maybe thirty brats paused whatever they were doing. Twenty five, maybe thirty pairs of eyes swivelled in on them. The spawn gestured to Kurama with a flourish.

For a moment there was an alarmed silence.

Then a purple-haired girl in a corner scoffed, turning and muttering, "Ugh, it's just Uzumaki." Shortly after, conversation resumed. Apparently the spawn ejecting himself into the classroom was not a novelty. Kurama was wholly unsurprised.

"Yo NARUTO!"

"Coming!"

The spawn beelined them both for a cluster of desks pushed together near the back windows, occupied by semi-familiar faces. Uchiha-brat was there, as was Dog-brat-number-two with his puppy tucked down the front of his sweater. Next to him was a tiny chubby human with spirals on his cheeks, digging into a tiered bent, and a brat in sunglasses dresses in an oversized jacket. Plastered face down on the desk, the last of cohort consisted of a ponytail sticking at absurd angles, seemingly asleep. It was a position Kurama would love to emulate.

The chubby one -- Akimichi, because two dozen repeats later Kurama could repeat the spawn's anecdotes and the characters in them verbatim -- scooted to the left to make room, giving the spawn maneuverability to drop Kurama into an empty chair. "Ow," the spawn said. Kurama stomped on his foot. How dare he complain. Kurama was the one dumped like a sack of rice!

Further planned violence, though, had to be halted for the questions, because all of a sudden Kurama found himself very accosted.

"You two don't look alike at _all_ ," was Dog-brat-number-two's first observation."Are you really twins?" (The asnwer was no. The spawn said: "Yeah duh.") This was followed by an intensely curious: "are you _really_ as smart as this dum-dum keeps saying?" (The answer was yes, the spawn said: "smarter than you, Kiba.") And if Rama was his real name (the spawn said: "only the adults call him Menma.") And why wasn't he in school before, and if he could eat as much ramen as the spawn in one sitting, and if he thought girls had cooties, and, and —

Now that there were no festivities to bedazzle, Dog-brat-number-two seemed driven to direct all his attention to poke at the new and shiny thing. Kurama did not deign to answer any of the questions. That was what the spawn was for.

Five minutes in, he went: "Are you mute?" He slapped a hand over the spawn's mouth. "Shut up, Naruto. I wanna hear him talk." The spawn made an indignant noise, and licked Dog-brat-number-two's palm. Dog-brat-number-two remained uncowed.

There was an anticipatory quiet. Kurama rolled his eyes, and kept his silence.

"Maybe he doesn't want to talk?" Akimichi interjected a little anxiously, when no one had spoke for a long twenty seconds. He gestured at the crinkly plastic bag in his lap. "Hi, I'm Chouji. Do you... want a chip?"

Kurama glanced sideways at him.

"Is that a no?" he wondered.

"Rama likes sweets." The spawn had finally unclasped Dog-brat-number-two's hand from his mouth. "Hey Chouji gimme some!" Apparently this was cue for Uchiha-brat or something, because he shoved a neatly wrapped cloth package in the spawn's direction. The spawn said: "Oh yeah," reached into his backpack, and shoved a lacquered black bento box right back. Kurama really really did not need the constant reminders about the Uchiha Mikoto system.

Interjecting from the side, Aburame said: "I believe we are making him uncomfortable. Why? Because from what we have heard, Naruto's brother does not engage greatly in social interaction. I believe we should welcome him in a calmer manner, Kiba."

"Shut up Shino."

"You're so _noisy_ ," muttered ponytail at a sulk, finally raising his head to fix them all with one half-lidded eye.

They were. They were incredibly, incredibly noisy.

"Sorry Shika," said the spawn, cracking open his chopsticks.

"Not sorry Shika," said Dog-brat number-two.

The spawn dug into his food with gusto. Kurama spied a tempting curry on rice and a side of tea eggs. Unstacking the layers allowed a bottom tray full of croquettes to let steam into the air. "I always have the best bentos," he said happily.

Uchiha-brat rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because my mom makes them."

"Your mom is _the_ best bento maker," the spawn said agreeably.

"Um," said Akimichi. He raised his hand a bit tentatively. "actually, in terms of bento composition, I think... my mom is better? Just a little bit."

Once it got rolling the ensuring argument wrangled in pretty much everyone else at the conjoined table. This included Aburame but excluded Nara, who didn't twitch even as a chopstick went swerving dangerously close to his head. Taking the distraction for what it was worth, Kurama removed himself with his own untouched lunch. He debated leaving the class. He debated leaving the building. He figured the outcome would probably not be worth the effort. High-child voices buzzed like irritating radio static.

Not very many empty seats were empty in the class, and there even less pockets of quiet. Kurama scoured around. There was a girl brat sitting by herself in the backcorner, though, red earphones over gunball pink hair and pouring intendedly over a book. It was not a very thick book. The action of reading was still the only intelligent thing Kurama had seen anyone do since he'd entered the building. And she had headphones, which meant they'd not be engaging in conversation anytime soon. Good. He took his lunch and sat in the empty seat of the adjacent desk.

Two bites into his tempura, the girl brat looked up, noticed his presence, and, blinked huge startled green eyes. She took off her headphones. "Um," she said, very timidly. "That's Ino's — "

Kurama glowered at her.

The remainder of her sentence trailed into a squeak. Shoulders hunched. She looked away.

Kurama ate his lunch in silence, content to ignore and be ignored right back. After a moment, when the girl brat finally realized he wasn't about to try anything as tedious as bite, she returned to her book. Occasionally a nervous sideways glance was snuck his way. This continued for a good two minutes, and then as if she'd spent the last hundred seconds gathering courage, girl-brat straightened her shoulders and whipped around.

Her expression was an extremely unsure resolute, which was... weird. It was a weird expression. "Umm. I'm Sakura. Haruno." Her pitch climbed. "What about you?"

Kurama, who had been perfectly fine with the previous equilibrium of the situation, scowled.

And he wouldn't know how to answer that question anyways. Menma was official. It was... whatever. Rama was apparently what the spawn had been passing on to the whole Father-damned building, but that was a bad nickname born from a toddler's inability to pronounce consonants. He wasn't giving her his actual name either. Not _Kurama_.

He scowled harder. "Um," said the girl-brat. Gumball. She shrank back into herself. Very distinctly, she reminded Kurama of those small woodland creatures that tended to rabbit away at any given noise. Hunched. Small. Quivering.

And then she was sitting up and looking alarmed, which was all the warning Kurama got.

 _Something_ wrenched his chair back and with great force jerked it to one side. Kurama caught a glimpse of a small-girl hand, nails painted a sparkly blue, and then nothing but the floor, which was the second time in half an hour. He didn't crash. His feet were semi-planted, but the momentum sent him stumbling. "Hey," said a sharp, angry voice. "What do you think you're doing?" And Kurama was going to actually bite whomever that voice belonged to, Father help him. It was another girl brat: pale blond hair, Yamanaka eyes, a blue sweater and striped leggings. Kurama was spinning on his heel with his teeth bared, mid-snarl, when Gumball leapt from her seat with fluttering hands.

"Ino Ino Ino it's fine it's fine!" She said in a rush, which did not seem to placate the Yamanaka brat at all, because she crossed her arms and in extremely dubious tones went: "Uh-huh _Sakura_ — _"_ even as Gumball hurriedly continued with: "Uh. No really. He was just quiet. And I don't think he liked me talking? I mean, I think he was looking for quiet. And I might've disturbed it? Um. I think? I'm sorry!"

She was planted in between the two of them, turning her head frantically from the Yamanaka brat to Kurama, and the apology was lost somewhere in the air.

Kurama clenched and unclenched his fists. He'd not quite swallowed his vitriol  but after the first heady rush of violence sense had told him poking out the brat's eye was not a good idea for consequence reasons. Gumball brat's hand was hovering in his personal space. He eyed it. Yamanaka brat eyed him.

It was a hostile few seconds.

Yamanaka brat, was, very grudgingly, the first to relent. She uncrossed her arms.

"Alright, fine," she said, sounding like all was very not fine indeed, but she unfixed her glare on Kurama to zone onto Gumball. "And Sakura, don't apologize!"

Gumball-brat snapped to attention. "I'm sorr—I mean. Yes."

" I left you alone for five minutes! For bathroom break!"

"Um."

"Where'd he even come from?"

This was not a question Yamanaka brat and seemed to be expecting an answer for, however, because with a flip of her hair she swept passed him. Primly, she perched onto the chair Kurama had summarily been evacuated out of. She crossed her ankles.

"You're Uzumaki Menma," she said in haughty tones.

It wasn't as if Kurama was going to refute that statement.

"The boys talk about you all the time," continued Yamanaka, by way of explanation. And then she made a face. "Well, mainly just Naruto, but you only need Naruto. He talks then loudest of them all."

"I know," said Kurama.

Somewhere near the left, a desk crashed.

Kurama glanced towards the noise, and found the spawn on the floor with Dog-brat-number-two, Sunglasses trying to separate them too avail. Akimichi looked kind of near tears. He was kneeling next to remnants of an upended Bento box. And Uchiha-brat was picking tomato out of his hair. Nara, in a state of beautiful zen, had slumped himself over an empty chair and was ignoring everything. There was a lot of shouting ongoing, but since most of it was from the spawn Kurama had barely noticed. The rest of the class ate their lunch and watched in cheery fascination as a rice ball went flying.

… Yeah.

"Kazuki-sense's going to be so mad again.” Yamanaka brat seemed massively unconcerned about that. She uncrossed her ankles and turned back to Kurama, expression less dubious now. "Well, if you wanted to avoid _that,_ I can't blame you, you know? But you shouldn't make that face. Especially at Sakura."

"I can do anything I want," said Kurama, ominous.

"Um, no," said Yamanaka brat, and got no further, because that was when the frazzled chunin teacher, finally back from whatever break, opened the door and started bellowing.

"Welcome back," said Miozumi, when they returned, three minutes later after having been thrown out, and the rest of the afternoon was occupied by a mixture of meditation and throwing weapons practice.

It was a long, long day.

Kurama had not expected otherwise, though. Burdensome and stupid were two of the adjectives he'd assigned to ninja school, and now they were being joined with _noise_ and fucking _food fights_. What was unexpected was the next day, when Yamanaka brat swept in, liberated half of Akimichi's lunch, and then stole Kurama just as the first vegetable was being hitting maximum velocity. She dug her nails into his arm like claws and dragged him away, the flats of her little brown boots clacking against the floor. "My daddy said you don't have parents so you can't help but be rude," she said, in a kind of superior, understanding way.

Kurama slapped her hand _off_.

"Just like that," declared Yamanaka brat.

"Hi," said Gumball, trailing to meet them with a book under her arm.

Today Kurama had also brought a book. It was titled "The History of Steam" and was a few hundred pages denser than anything else readable in the classroom. Gumball zoomed onto it immediately, a hungry look passing over her face. "Um." she said.  Kurama eyed her, and then propped it up like an offering to some small, wild animal.

Gumball snatched it. "Do you like reading?"

"… Yes," Kurama said.

"Me too!"

Yamanaka nodded decisively. "You can be bookworms together."

Day three passed to the same tune as days one and two. On day four Kurama could finally sleep in again. He woke up at one in the afternoon to research the road blockages that came with Fire Country monsoons, worked straight until the spawn came back at five, bearing noodles packed into sytrofoam cups, and then was dragged out to help pick up about eight buckets of paint. This was tolerable; what was not tolerable was the spawn every single afternoon afterwards, non-stop, the same thing, until it was Saturday and Kurama said, at breakfast, through the spawn's newest glitter-bomb creation ramble, "if you try to make me go to your stupid prank meeting again I will _rip out your tongue and strangle you with it_."

The spawn paused with his chopsticks hanging midair. He blinked. The line of his mouth wobbled.

Kurama was half a second into wondering if there were going to be waterworks (which made no sense, the spawn was insane and had skin thicker than the village walls) before, in a show of emotion on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, the spawn  leapt up with a whoop.

"You're normal again!"

“Tccht.”

Kurama was not normal so much as supremely distracted, but it was a nice thought.

The Acadmey was distracting. On principal it was irritating. With the extra task slotted into his timetable Kurama had much less time to work, but he also had less time to think. It was also completely stupid and completely inane: that opinion had not changed an iota. He was nowhere under twelve years old and any material introduced by the curriculum was either offensive or dull.

It was really, really stupid.

On Monday of the second week, Miozumi gave him a stack of assessment tests. Mindful of Dog-brat's lurking outside, Kurama did the math package, did the language package, did not write "This fucking village," and a single kanji scream under the short essay  titled _"Konohagakure's Hokages,"_ and then went through Geography and comprehensive chakra theory. It was easy. Kurama finished in under two hours. Then at at the beginning of the next day it was revealed that those tests were not in fact tailored to six year olds, when Miozumi pulled him aside and told him they were a) the year five exams and b) that if he wanted to go to another class, at least for theory, he should, because year two curriculum was not going to challenge him the slightest.

She was just repeating the Monkey-man. Kurama made a disparaging noise between his teeth.

“What do you want to do, Menma-kun?”

“Trade school,” said Kurama scathingly. He was bitter he’d been tricked, although in retrospect she’d not said what kind of tests they were, other than that they were suppose to gauge his abilities . Before he left the Academy that day she brought him a booked titled: “ _T_ _he Silk Road Trade: Lighting to Fire._ ” It weighed the same as a brick and seemed actually interesting.

Then there was lunch.

Krama had never claimed he understood the mental ongoings of small, human children. That did not supersede the fact that now constantly surrounded by small, human children. Yamanaka and Gumball had evidently decided _something_. Kurama didn't know what. They found him at lunch and flocked, or in Gumball's case, hovered, and eventually by the third day of the second week he just beelined for their corner the moment the spawn corralled them both through the doors of the first-year class.  

For the most part, Gumball and Yamanaka seemed to operate as a closed system. Occasions where they would join the spawn's brat cohort were rare, but usually it involved Akimichi's lunch and significantly less air-born projectors. Quite frankly they — the duo — were not all that much better than the spawn's brat cohort. Yamanaka  talked nearly as much as he spawn,  just with better articulation and a different array of topics. But at least five desks down with them, Kurama was not in the ballistic trajectory of a stray fork or chopstick.

Two weeks in, the spawn grinned at him and said, "See, friends are nice!" Then more dubiously tacked on: "Even if they _are_ girls."

"I don't have _friends,_ " said Kurama.

Really, Gumball was the most tolerable of them all.

She was quiet, which made her the only quiet living thing in the class. And she read, which made her the only semi-sensible thing in the class. Of course her level of reading was drastically bellow Kurama's. Picture books. Chapter books with large fonts. H'd caught her engrossed in a second-hand, condensed edition of _"The Bamboo Cutter"_ which at least signaled she had acceptable tastes. The most important thing was that she didn't talk to him, or at him, or around him. Silence was Kurama's preferred state of interaction with five year olds. 

And then it turned out Gumball was not a miracle of sense and was as talkative as the rest of them.

It happened when Yamanaka was away for the week, along with Akimichi and Nara. Kurama did not know the circumstances specifically, but on Monday of week four he came in at lunch to find Gumball shrunk like a bent leaf and a gaggle of other tiny children surrounding her, one of them -- purple hair and freckles -- perched quite annoyingly on what was now Kurama's designated seat.

Appropriately, Kurama told her, "move."

Purple hair did not. She took one look at Kurama, said, snidely, "You hanging out with freaks now, forehead?" to which Gumball, who up until that moment been attempting to sink through her chair, reacted with  a suprisingly shrill:  "He's not a freak!"

"That's not what anyone else says. _Everyone_ knows he and his brother are freaks."

"That's -- " And Gumball was looking at Kurama now, with a bitten lip and a crumpled expression, eyes huge and green. "You can't talk to people like that. It's -- mean! It's so mean. Ino will--"

Purple hair scoffed. "Ino's not here, Sakura."

What was this even. Pig-tail pulling drama? Kurama was not at all offended by what was probably meant to be offensive remarks, but he was hungry, and he'd kind of hoped Gumball would never learn to pitch her voice that high, ever.

So he took a page of of Yamanaka's book and yanked the chair hard enough to send Purple-hair tumbling to the floor. Then sat as the brat's incomprehensibly outraged noises grew in volume. He said, precisely: "If you don't move, I'm going to set my idiot brother on you. Speaking from experience I don't think you'll like that."

Purple hair heaved herself to rights. "Those idiots? They can't --"

Kurama jammed a foot into her shoe the way he did when the spawn was being a nuisance. "I have a history of biting things, and you are being very annoying at the moment." He could feel his expression fold into a glower. "Go _away_.”

Five out of five of the surrounding children paled.

To be honest Kurama had not expected the threat to work. That was why he'd tried setting the spawn on her first. Threats of bodily harm never did anything but make the spawn laugh or bite right back, and when he'd tried it against Yamanaka she'd only blown loftily on her drying nails. Crowding children were basically part of the furniture, these days. Had the new brats stayed, Kurama would've just stolen Gumball's earphones for the week to eat and read in quiet until Yamanaka got back, since apparently they weren't on good terms.  "You dropped your book," he told Gumball, when the brats left a speedy scramble, because he was a patron of literature. Gumball didn't make any move to pick it up.

Kurama glanced absentmindedly over the top of his page, and then became very alarmed.

Gumball's mouth was a thin, wobbling, familiar line. Her eyes were huge, wobbly familiar circles. If she started sniffling than Kurama was going to be flinging himself out of there, what the hell, he would've figured Gumball wanted them gone as well, considering how wilted she'd looked. "If you start crying," he warned, eying her warily.

Gumball smiled. It was a wobbly smile. She pressed her hands to her mouth.

And from there on onwards she began to _talk to him._

Kurama liked Gumball for the sole reason that she didn't talk to him. Originally, he'd thought that maybe this her natural state of being. This hypothesis was proven wrong because Monday, week four onwards, Gumball seemed dementedly determined to prove to Kurama that she could outpace the spawn in terms of sheer words. Yes, her way of conversation was a lot more halting than the spawn's and Yamanaka's, but the number of opinions she had did not fall short to the former two. Kurama had no idea where these opinions were coming from. For a week, he hoped quite desperately that they were the result of Yamanaka being away, but... no. Yamanaka coming back did not stop their flood.

"Well," said Yamanaka, and turned to Kurama, Monday of week five at lunch, "you're okay." She patted Kurama on the shoulder. Kurama twitched at the contact.

He didn't get it. _Human children._

* * *

 

The first snowfall came in December.

It started mid-afternoon and went well through the night, a slurry of whirling flakes. By morning, though, the sky was clear. A thick, glittering blanket of white was glazed onto the world like cake frosting. In the afternoon the spawn cajoled Kurama into a parka and unweildy snowpants and went to the park to roll packing snow into lopsided snowmen.

Konoha’s continental geography made for hot, hot summers, and freezing, if short winters. Kurama and the spawn slept under the kotatsu more than they did the bed. The apartment heater was old and needed repair work. The kotatsu was perfectly functional albeit limited in range. And for once it was Kurama trying to squeeze the spawn to death during the night, cold even with an extra sweater, trying to leech the spawn’s permanent hot-water-bottle warmth.

It was cold and it was cold, during the day and during the night. Kurama’s limbs and fingers were unweildy, his blood lethargic in his veins. If he stayed outside too long the chill would worm its way into his skull and the back of his teeth and settle, a migraine. Winter had been Father’s favourite season. Right now at this time  it was Kurama’s least favourite. It’d been different, In mountains. Six months and more to Konohagakrue’s three, the snow literally up meters in the coldest weeks where the trees cracked and sometimes exploded. It’d been — worse. In that sense. But Kurama’d not been at a mercy of its most dangerous elements then. What he remembered were the clear skies and his Father’s quiet longing, looking out the stained windows to the world beyond, in this season that he’d told Kurama was the closest to his mother Princess Kaguya’s homeland, somewhere across space and time. On the nights before the solstice the temple monks drank wine and ate dark rye bread, before venturing outside in neat formation, carrying torches that lit in chakra sparks; their voices rising in hymm for the deceased.

Kurama went to the Academy and went to the library and poured himself over reports of Southeast Wind Country until his eyes were aching and the words were blurring unlegibly on the page. He traced and retraced the seal in his notebooks, tried applying two and a half experimental keys, and then ripped up the failed results. Just before New Year’s the Dog-brat took them shopping. His fashion sense was still hideous. They got little boots and scarves that were more like blankets, and glaringly bright winter hats with pompom tails.

On Saturday the first week after the Holidays he bumped into Gumball at the library, somewhere in the cooking section where Kurama was eyeballing cake recipes and Gumball was trying to grab a book on spring soups. She followed him into the reading corner with the two worn loveseats and Matatabi’s portrait in between.

"I don't actually want you to be here," he told her, barely looking up. 

Halfway through opening her book, Gumball's expression faltered. "Um, oh," she said.

Kurama waited for her to leave, applying himself to a sakura-mochi ingrediants list in the meantime, until five minutes in and still dawdling uncertainty in her chair Gumball suddenly asked, "Would you like a tart?" in uncertain tones. She pulled a tupperware box from her backpack. Kurama eyed it warily. But he'd naught packed snacks today, so he took one. Here was a decision he instantly regretted: the moment his fingers touched the groove of a tart, Gumball's expression _lit up_.

And then she proceeded, in detail, to tell him all about tarts and soups and the bubbles one needed to see rise for the perfect cup of tea, and how her mother owned a teashop, and I saw your book do you bake, Menma-kun? It was a very long, exited, and one-sided conversation. Kurama wondered if anything would shut her up, and then despaired because if she was anything like the spawn than the answer to that question was: nope, nothing.

If she was anything like the spawn, then detouring somewhere quiet would do exactly nothing as well. She would just follow him.

In vengeance, he ate all of Gumball's tarts.

Three hours later Kurama left the library with two books on obscure mathematics, his cookbook, and a medical dictionary to make slogging through all the anatomy and neurology he had in the apartment a little easier. Winter was a good season for reading and research.

In general though, it wasn't any good for Kurama.

Something about the cold, the lack of life, added up. The chill screwed itself into his bones the same way it screwed itself into the earth, the dead trees, the wilted grass beneath all the whiteness. Under Kurama's feet what should have been quicksilver chakra had slowed to some clumsy and lethargic molasses. The hibernating rumble of it echoed in his chakra sense like gravity pulling down.

The days he spent alone in the apartment were miserable. The days he spent in the Academy were also miserable, but in a different sense. The Academy was a good distraction. Kurama despised it greatly.

He squinted through his anatomy and neurology books, cross referencing words and  stupid, too-complicated physiology at a crawl. He had to go back to the library for an introductory biology textbook. Then a chemistry one. Most of the information, once finally decoded, was not very enlightening. The enlightening parts were worrying.

Brain chemistry. Enzymes. Apparently the list of things that could malfunction were many, and Kurama had no idea which of applied in his case. Tailed beasts had no... brains. Nothing made of organics that was so squishy and prone to error. They were _chakra_.

In the end he just tried not to think too much about the brain thing.

Kurama got headaches. He slept through them. He went to the Academy and Miozumi attempted to make him spend two hours outside in negative fifteen degree weather to practice katas of all things. On school days he was snappish, outside of them he was grim and sullen. He tried not to think too hard.  In his case thinking really _did not help._ He had too much time and too little time and the Academy was distracting, and his work was distracting, but Kurama was unfortunately used to fading distractions into the background.

 

* * *

 

February came with minimal fanfare and a dip in temperature once again. By precedence, the last three weeks of winter were always the coldest. Kurama knew March would melt the snow — first into grey slush and then the monsoon rain — to usher in the new growth. For the remainder of the season, he dressed in layers and carried a thermos with him at all times, drank enough tea and lemon water to make himself feel bloated, stayed inside whenever he could, and somehow, somehow, still managed to catch a cold.

The spawn fussed and hovered. Dog-brat hovered even more. Kurama coughed and blew his nose and drank equal amounts of acrid cold medicine and disgustingly bitter migraine pills melted into a cup of hot water.

It did not take long for the cold to turn into a fever.

Of course it didn’t.

Five in the afternoon when the spawn came back from school, and Kurama was face-down on the Kotatsu table with his head stuck on page 45 of _Euclid in the Rainforest,_ feeling too hot and too cold at once, wanting to fall asleep but not managing it, keeping his eyes closed and shut because when he moved last the world was actively distorting around him. The sound of the door opening came from a strange, faraway place.

“Rama I’m baaaack!” the spawn called. It sounded underwater.

There were footsteps. “Hey Rama? Rama?” A hand shook his shoulder. The spawn saying: “Rama wake up look at me _what’s happening_." 

Kurama blinked.

White. He hadn't realized he'd lost time but he was lying on his back to a white ceiling. It smelled of soaps and underneath that antiseptic. And when he blinked again it was to a backdrop of city lights, a night sky with a crescent moon. Wind whistled through his hair, icy against his cheek. He was squished against a bare shoulder. Someone had swaddled him in a million blankets like a matryoshka doll, too tight and too uncomfortable, and when he made a sleepy, outraged noise, Dog-brat’s hand came up to cradle the back of his skull, saying “Shhh, shhh,” as they flitted through the rooftops. Kurama tipped his head sideways. He was not wearing his ANBU mask, the Dog-brat. He smelled of bamboo lacquer and anxiety and heart-sickness.

A blink, and that scene too dissolved.

Kurama woke up back in the apartment, sprawled underneath a veritable mountain of blankets while the spawn’s chakra signature laid dormant in the main room.

He said: “mrrghh?” a little loopily. The bedside alarm clock read 3:00 am in bright green letters.

He staggered out of bed. _Bathroom._

In the reflection of the bathroom mirror his face looked pale and wane. Well, paler and waner than usual. Kurama let the warm water sluice soap from his hands. A bracelet that had not been there this morning sat on his wrist, looking hospital issued. He plucked it off and tossed it into the garbage can.

A migraine onslaught made him wince. The world blurred like a funhouse mirror.

Ow.

He sat down.

“Fucking colds,” he muttered,  and squinted at the halogen lights.

Three bulbs, lined side by side. Their brightness made his eyes ache and some back part of his head start to whisper alarms. It was three in the morning. The last time he’d been awake at three it’d been — actual months ago. October twelfth, when he’d taken out the seals that never worked.

Those seals.

Kurama snorted to himself. Fucking seals. He turned, and then opened the bathroom cupboard. His notebooks and pens were, as always, clogged at the back. He shuffled them out, flipped to the pages that came open most easily, laid out the designs he knew from tracing over and over again.

He squinted.

Aaaand they  were distorting too. Some of the ink lines bloated, floated. Kurama clicked his tongue. He rubbed his eyes. The image didn’t clear, only smeared like charcoal wiped with a thumb.

The lights were doing strange things. The seal was doing strange, shifting things. Snakes and tangles. How strange. How strange.

How strange, that it was so beautiful.

The seal was not supposed to be beautiful. It was irksome, and despicable. When Kurama wasn't trying to unravel it with a single-minded concentration it took effort not to rip the entire notebook on its stupid screwy ciphers and completely abstract base formation into shreds. But it was also three in the morning right now, and Kurama was out of it enough to forget its purpose, its cause. Then in those seconds before his brain lurched itself out of zombified delirium it was the most brilliant riddle he'd seen in two thousand years. He touched fingers over the raised ink and the seal was daring and beautiful in all the ways it hadn't destroyed or crumpled or failed, it was beautiful in its pure aesthetic design that made no sense, in the swirl of the base, the cramped programming of it's amplification characters. It was mad and brilliant and terrible and it had, somehow, hysterically, worked.

It was laughable. It was actually quite hilarious.

Kurama's mouth was curling without his permission.

This seal.

_This seal._

And this situation.

If the seal was funny than this situation was on another level of hysteria altogether. Kurama spun his pen over a knuckle, watching it catch the light. He felt very sane and very loopy at the same time.

Because this was the situation:

Here he was, Kurama, the most powerful being on the planet. Here he was, six years old in body, two thousand minus whatever the heck human neurology had scrambled in mind, too weak and skinny and fever-prone with his worst enemy’s eyes and hair and skin and the spawn who was her son. He sat in a human bathroom, in an apartment with a ceiling fan that creaked every second rotation, with walls stained from a five year old's glitter bombs and frequent snackbreaks. Here Kurama knew the origin of every nick and oil splatter and the chakra signature sleeping next door was the most familiar in a thousand years of new meetings.

His Father had told him once: “ _children are not to be burdened by the legacies of their ancestors,”_ and his Father had said: “ _You are to be their guiding light, my nine, my sons and daughters.” A_ nd his Father, oh his Father, all the things he could not have known.

In front of Kurama's eyes the seal was dissolving and rising, the ink lines waving little hands. He pressed his pen tip to its epicentre, following the spiral path.

Blue ink bled into the paper, a hole. Weeping paper.

And this situation:

Anger and hatred and irritation that Kurama pulled together because they were easy, because they were present, because they were all he had for a hundred years. He did not need anything else and he did not want for anything else. All these things he neither needed nor wanted: the spawn, this stupid human boy, saying “ _I love you,”_ as if he knew what that meant. The Dog-brat, who only ever smelled like regret and old blood except on the days Kurama allowed him to tuck Kurama and the spawn in at night, as if he knew what _that_ meant. None of them knew what anything meant. None of them knew anything at all. Uzumaki Menma had not existed, did not exist, will never exist. All this bastardized home represented was a noose around Kurama’s neck.

This situation.

He’d never asked for it, their love, never wanted it.

But it was what he’d gotten.

And that was the problem. Part of it. Half of it. This was what he’d gotten.

The spawn — so annoying, loud and demanding and with Namikaze’s eyes and Kushina’s grin and Kurama’s freedom strung on his neck, and half of the time Kurama wanted to hit him and half the time Kurama wanted to shake him, and some small, parceled moments of six years Kurama sighed and soothed his tears and told him, “It _’ll be alright you rascal child.”_ The Dog-brat — always too close and too careful in his watch, infinitely frustrating, designated pack mule. This village and its hideous traditions and its hideous inhabitants and its — _the Noodle man and Gumball and the soaring library_ — but it didn’t balance it. It would never balance out. Having to deal with this village and it’s — _everything_ could be balanced by exactly nothing.

He thought about it in a sort of delirium. The blue ink lines he drew on the seal was carving a river, a key. It made no sense. It made perfect sense. He thought about Uzumaki Menma the boy who did not exist. It was funny in an almost abstract sort of way. It was like a joke between himself and himself. It might have been the fever talking again.

Eventually, he smacked himself over the head.

It stung.

Sort of.

“Fevers,” Kurama said in distaste, and then hauled himself out of the bathroom to collapse in bed.

* * *

 Something had died in his mouth overnight. Kurama took a breath, let it out. The first thing he saw in the morning was Dog-brat’s face, and then the introduction of something fouly bitter to his taste buds as Dog-brat stuck in a spoon.

“What the hell,” he said, after swallowing frantically. The foul thing, on the accounts of being so terrible, was probably medicine. The Dog-brat looked unimpressed. The spawn was a very orange blob at his bedside, eating eggs from a plate. His fork was paused halfway between his lap and his mouth.

And then both fork and plate were going flying, saved only by an acrobatic lunge from Dog-brat, just as the spawn barrelled across the covers.

“You woke up!” his tone was accusing. “Rama _you fainted_.”

Kurama was not awake enough for this. “... I did?”

“Yes!”

He tried to rack through his memory. No, he certainly didn’t remember doing so. He remembered… not much from yesterday.  Flashes. A night sky. The spawn’s tinny voice but not the words. The bathroom, maybe? Or had that just been the dream. There was something about laughing a lot in the bathroom.

… It was probably a dream.

“Huh,” he said.

The spawn thumped him in the chest. “Dumbo! Don’t _huh_. The nurse said your temperature was up to — to 42 degrees!”

Since Kurama remembered none of this, he only shrugged. “Well Oops,” he said.

“Dumbo!”

“Stop that.”

“Dumbo Dumbo!”

“You make it sound I _like_ having colds, nitwit,” said Kurama, and then stole the rest of the spawn’s eggs.

 

* * *

 

They physically didn’t let him out of bed for a week, which in Kurama’s personal opinion was overkill. He drank a lot of hot cocoa and was reduced to filling in Sudoku puzzles from a booklet Dog-brat had brought. Yamanaka sent flowers; Gumball sent cake; anything Uchiha Mikoto sent Kurama told the spawn not to show in his presence. The Monday just before March Dog-brat finally evacuated from the apartment, and the spawn was herded back to school.

Kurama got out of bed to a blissfully free apartment, his ears ringing from seven continuous unbroken days of the spawn talking. He made himself tea, turned on the Kotatsu, and then took out one of the ten billion soups Dog-brat had stashed in the fridge for breakfast. He made a mental to-do list while eating. There wasn’t much. Kurama needed to make a trip to the library to get new books, but he was also banned from going outside for the time being. He should’ve chucked his booklist at Dog-brat before that one had left.

Monday mornings were, however, always seal days (sometimes it was set seal on fire days) especially since it’d been two and a half actual weeks. Kurama compiled his supplies on the Kotatsu after dishes had been cleared, chewed on his pencil, turning over the newest theorem he wanted to apply. All those math books were good for something.

He opened the notebook. He stopped.

That was…

Someone had done _something_ to the model of the seal with all its component parts. This was the newest re-draw yet, on a fresh page, and it’d been sitting ready for a possible key.  Now there were scribbles in blue pen and lines bisecting careful inked parts. The handwriting was Kurama’s own.

… How high had his fever _been_?

He squinted.

… What was the code even? It looked… stupid. And ridiculous.

Dubiously, he set the tip of his pen to the paper. He should probably cross the page out and chuck it, but. Well. Re-drawing the seal tended to take an hour.

Cross the matrix over here, tie in the main storage component over to the yin-yang, twist sideways that part which hooked the the entire seal into the chakra system. Take it all apart and then _spin_ the bottom command ninety degrees, so it was over the transformation characters...

Five minutes later, his pen stalled.

The key made perfect sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... have the premonition this chapter is filled with more typos than usual. If you see one please, please let me know. 
> 
> And we've finally gotten that development out of the way. It's only taken 60k words. The plot is moving guys! Kurama is just as surprised as anyone, really. We've covered a lot this chapter, but beyond academy relationships and introduction of a few more canon characters, I just really needed the seal out of the way. Now its... well. We'll see the aftermath next chapter.
> 
> Leave me a comment if there's anything you liked or disliked. I'm finishing this chapter at three in the morning, and while some of Kurama's not-very-coherent thought process is very much intentional some of it might just be me.


	14. The Coming of Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The breaking of seals, plotting, dinner with Mikoto. 
> 
> (Also, Naruto learns to be sneaky. Sort of not really.)

 

That couldn’t be.

Kurama stared at the page, unblinking, and then flipped to a new sheet to redraw the diagram, seal plus key, simplified and slightly cleaner. Command matrix went over the amplifiers. Chakra regulator fitted into the command matrix. The yin and yang balancers slotted, somehow, neatly and miraculously — using the new _should not be working_ key _—_ over the storage. It now looked like any coherent chakra compression seal. Except for the last six years and ten dozen different jigsaw renditions, no matter which way Kurama turned or nitpicked, Uzumaki Kushina’s seal had been so out of coherent it’d tipped right into the borders of crazy.

Now it made sense. It made — not perfect sense, of course — but it was like comparing a five year old’s crayon scribbles to the perfectly typewritered page of a book. Kurama could see the internal workings of the mechanisms, the stop and the flow of energy, how the seal dissolved into his shell’s chakra system to enclose Kurama’s Ying behind its walls.

He could see exactly how snapping apart the inhibitors would send those walls _crashing._

It would be so _easy._ Just disconnect that little port, the junction point between the command and the main system. Then the entire seal would dissolve without a hitch, seamless. Kurama could be out and gone with a twist of his fingers and two strokes of chakra-ink. And without the possibility — of which had been a real ctoncern up until this moment —  of exploding himself spectacularly.

He could be free.

Blank disbelief came first.

This couldn’t be. He’d had six years in the seal and nearly two years working on it day and night and he’d what? Needed some delirious fever dream to find this? Unbelievable. No. It was too easy, this revelation, how all the separate parts came together and fell apart like some beginner’s origami folding. So simple. The seal was not supposed to be simple and it had not been simple and this could not be, was _he hallucinating again —_

He smacked the side of his head with one palm. Nothing changed.

It didn’t make sense.

It’d stumped him for actual years. Now he could look at the breakdown of its parts and _know_. It didn’t make sense. But — she’d not had time, Uzumaki Kushina. She’d had no time, actually. And she’d had so little chakra, she’d had barely enough blood, and there were only three base arrays that could possibly hold him. Kurama looked at the seal and thought: this was one of those arrays. He thought: she’d been clever. She’d not had enough time nor chakra nor blood so instead she had twisted that damn array until it was unrecognizable, folded into itself, and the rest of the seal followed suit.

The hope in his throat tasted a little like bile. There was a roaring in his ears. If this was the answer if this was the key —

Kurama checked it over again.

And again.

The results didn’t change. This was the key.

He flattened his palms over the inklines.

_Freedom._

For a moment he couldn’t think past it, that thought, that potential. He had been waiting years and years and it was like the crash of a waterfall over rocks. All it would take was five seconds and one twist. Then his shell would be gone and Kurama would be free, thirty stories of chakra and fury and himself again,  Konohagakure nothing but dust and atoms and the chakra-smog of desperation, wreckage spilling blood onto the streets, like October twelve six years ago but without Namikaze or Uzumaki Kushina to stop him. And he’d promised: _they would pay for all that they’d wrought._ And Kurama was seeing red, he was seeing white, nothing but destruction on the horizon, intent unfurling in a tide —

There was blood in his mouth. It tasted metallic.

Kurama blinked back to himself.

The seal was crumpled underneath his knuckles. He licked the hard top edge of his teeth. He’d bitten his tongue.

Okay.

Okay, no.

Deep breaths dulled the waterfall to a murmur. Kurama continued until nothing but the hum of the heater and the buzz of the fridge, the quiet tick-tick-tock of the clock on the opposite wall. They were inside, mundane, apartment noises. He eyed the seal for a few, lingering seconds, and then tore the two pages out of the notebook. He folded them twice: into halves, than quarters.

He had to remember: he had a _plan_.

Konohagakure was going to be atomized, but this was too soon. Kurama wasn’t ready. He’d not the key to the spawn’s seal yet. He’d not finished figuring out the specifics of the escape plan yet, not the route to Wind nor the chakra-suppressors. He needed patience.

Just a little bit. Just a little more.

The time to be gone would come, soon.

* * *

 

It was a splendid, delicious, and glorious secret.

The spawn kept looking at him strangely for the next few days, and on Friday afternoon actually called Dog-brat with the explanation of: “Rama’s still weird, are we sure the fever’s gone?” Kurama awoke from afternoon nap to the sight of Dog-brat with a thermometer dangling between his fingers and more cough syrup in a paper cup, whose appearance finally soured the continuous giddiness Kurama had been wearing for the past two days. Galled, he jammed the thermometer into a flower pot and ignored both Dog-brat and the spawn through dinner preparation.

Still, it wasn't enough to turn his mood.  

 _I can destroy you,_  he thought, immensely cheerful, to the walls and the kitchenware and Dog-brat and the spawn, _right now, immediately if I really really wanted._ He ladled extra eggplant into Dog-brat’s soup and generously passed the soysauce without being asked. For dessert, Kurama allowed himself an extra-large slice of pie.

He hummed his way to bed.

Of course, there was the Plan, and now that Stage one had finally been hurdled over the next logical advancement was to Stage two. Which was why, on Saturday morning, Kurama was chewing irritably at a pencil and saying: “No keep it _stable what is your chakra control,_ ” as the spawn made faces at him. Namikaze’s seal was wavering like a mirage on his navel, the ink disappearing and reappearing as chakra distribution changed.

“It’s hard,” complained the spawn.“Why’d you want it anyway?” He poked at his belly. Half of the seal’s top section disappeared.

“ _Don’t move_ ,” said Kurama.

The spawn kicked his legs and poked at it again. Little shit. “It just looks like squiqqles. This is the thing keeping… _it_ right? How’s that work?”

“Quantum chakra theory in relation to time-space compression and integral — “

“Blah,” said the spawn, like Kurama expected, and halted that line of questioning.

Or not.

Because after a moment he piped up: “So do you get what it’s doing what it’s doing?”

“Quantum —”

“In words. Small words.”

“I don’t,” Kurama lied blithely, and squinted at particular half-character in a circle that looked…. Like a magnifier? Something. Namikaze’s handwriting, after so long dithering on Kushina’s, was unfamilliar. ”That requires a key.” And then, to cover his bases, he added, “and advanced sealing knowledge, which I don’t have.”

“But you just said —”

“That’s _basi_ c sealing knowledge.”

“That’s basic?” wondered the spawn, sounding dubious. He pursed his lips. “Wait. Were you just doing the thing where you make bigger words to make it sound complicated —”

Kurama grunted a response. “No, that’s just _basic_.”

“Oh.” He paused. Kurama told him to shove in more chakra and the seal bloomed, meticulous and expansive on the spawn’s skin. It was such a pain to draw.

Five minutes later, the spawn asked: “Are you done yet?”

“No.”

Another five minutes: “Rama are you done yet?”

He was not dignifying that with a response.

“Rama I’m bored I’m so bored I’m booooooored.”

In the end, it took an entire hour, by the end of which the spawn was singing an off key rendition of ninety-nine frogs in a well while Kurama’s composure frayed quite rapidly. He traced the final ink loop with a hand that was twitching from the scrupulous coordination needed, snapped his notebook shut, and then stabbed the eraser end of his pencil into the spawn’s navel. The spawn squealed, cowed for maybe half a second, before he rebounded off the bed.

An eyebrow twitched.

“You do remember not to,” Kurama started threateningly, just as the spawn scampered out the door. No one could ever know and If by some stupidity the spawn _blabbed —_

“Of course I remember. I pinky pinky promised,” and the spawn, and before he turned around the corner, added with all the self-assurance of someone who thought himself six and invincible: “If anything tries _anything_ have to get through _me_.”

* * *

 

There was something extremely satisfying about decoding Namikaze’s seal. There was also something extremely tedious, but every triple checked, neatly converted line of command matrix meant he was making progress. With Kushina, Kurama had had to start from the outside in, and that absolutely infuriating base had given only a loose folder of pieces that wouldn’t fit.

Namikaze’s outline and composition were perfectly clear. But he’d clever about it, that blonde toad, all these hidden tricks and traps layered onto one another, careful, elaborate and deliberately misleading. This was not a split-second work, it was a culmination.

Kurama didn’t give a shit. He’d just broken Uzumaki Kushina’s seal. Sure, Namikaze’s was a slog, but it was a slog with a fixed destination point. He’d been almost afraid there, for a second. Two spiraling matrix lines on the spawn’s stomach later and Kurama had nearly laughed. Even though they’d called Namikaze  a seal-master he was no Uzumaki.

It was great.

On Monday he willingly woke up before eight and actually went to the Academy with a skip in his step. The ground was muddy with last night’s rain, the grass gradually turning from a dry yellow to green; it smelled of spring, the warming air, growing things, cherry blossoms in the near future. Kurama dressed into a single sweater and blue rain boots. The spawn leapt into puddles and sent water droplets flying.

Miozumi had them meditating in the morning. Kurama used the time to muse on Namikaze’s semi-unorthodox use of balancers. The first thing Yamanaka asked during lunch was: “You’re not contagious right?” before she she stole the top tier of Akimichi curry rice bento and swapped it with Kurama’s store-bought one.  Gumball had brought cucumber spring soup to share. She poured it from her thermos into paper cups and gave passed it around. 

Kurama made sweets. He spent an entire day pounding mochi and another day pureeing ten pounds of chestnuts trying out Mont Blanc recipes. They went cherry-blossom viewing on the twenty fourth; Gumball’s birthday was on the twenty-eighth, wherein Yamanaka kept side-eyed him for not getting her a present.

The spawn managed to march up, down, and around the trunk of one of Konoha’s redwoods without falling. Kurama shooed him onto water walking.

In the meantime there was research to keep Kurama occupied. Namikaze’s seal, but also chakra dampeners, which were a study in trying to remember blood seals and other derivatives. He spent an hour in the library researching Konohagakure’s sensor clans; plenty of information on them there was not. Kurama needed more than just “Academy student” clearance for those, which was a shame. But he had a Dog-brat.

… Until he remembered Dog Brat was gone, had left shortly after the tenth of March, and if prior years were to go by he was also not coming back until late-April.

_Ugh._

Fine. Whatever. It could be put off.

So instead Kurama funneled his attention into the chakra-binders, and then the tidbits of clone theory he could steal from his own memories and the sadly inadequate academy textbooks. It took the spawn three weeks to go from water-diving to water-skidding. Kurama watched him zoom across the clear surface of a pond, nearly crash land on the other side, and figured: good enough.

On a morning that smelled of clean rain and birdsong, Kurama hauled the spawn up to the roof and said: “sit, I’m going to teach you the shadow-clone technique.”

* * *

 

The lesson went as expected, which was to say, quite terribly despite the spawn’s evident enthusiasm. This time at least Kurama had the dual benefits of a pre-determined lesson plan and also pre-determined experience concerning the spawn’s annoyingly inadequate learning curve, so he only spent half an hour repeating the basics of hand-sign theory and another half an hour despairing over the the spawn’s inability to mold his chakra correctly before removing himself for tea and biscuits.

He liberally drank one steaming pot of citrus tea and finished half a plate of his new shortbread recipe before the spawn rocketed down the apartment walls and bounced through the balcony.

“I got smoke!” he hollered in rapturous excitement. Tomato vines and a lone hibiscus pot jumped at the force of his arrival.

Kurama tossed down more tea, feeling resigned but not surprised. “Great. Now if you can get an actual clone by next year, I’ll be happy.”

“Whaddyou mean _year._ I’ll only need a few months, just you watch!” said the spawn, lip jutting. Kurama gave him a look over the rim of his cup.

“It took you a year to _wall walk_.”

“No it didn't.”

“Without falling down every ten steps.”

The spawn said: “I have experience now! It’ll go faster!” which was not at all encouraging.

Factoring in the spawn’s ability to chakra into his plans was painful but necessary. At least Kurama’s estimates seemed accurate: the weeks passed and the spawn still was getting only smoke and on one lucky occaison a half clone, fuzzy at the edges and looking stupendously unsure of itself, staying for half a moment where the spawn crowed triumph before popping.

“Ow,” said the spawn, afterwards, blinking rapidly.

“That would be the memory transfer,” said Kurama.

The spawn looked like it was all his birthdays come at once. “They give me memories?” he asked, gleeful, and for the remainder of the afternoon went through the handsigns again, and again. At dinner he questiond Kurama whether these clones could be redone with glitter or explosions, the same as in the movies the spawn liked to watch. Mid-swallow Kurama had a flash of that brief and terrible future: spawn, glittery and exploding, multiplied dozen fold, and nearly choked on his tempura.

“No,” he said.

“But Raaama — “

“ _No,”_ and he reached over and whaked the spawn with his chopsticks, who retreated, a little mopey, but still intent enough to glance at Kurama hopefully all the way until bed.

* * *

 

Accostal of Dog-brat for village secrets was the first thing Kurama did when twerp came back, a few pounds lighter and with his arm in a splint. He'd brought them books and treats: elaborate cakes and sweets packed off into gilted boxes, a western coral style recipe book, some poetry in Eastern Lightning English that Kurama couldn't read very well, partially because the prose was ridiculous and partially because it'd been a while since English. The span insisted on going to the Noodle-man's for dinner, where Dog-brat cleaned off two bowls of miso ramen without once removing either of his masks. He left after dropping them off at the apartment; by bedtime four thick volumes concerning the founding clans had slotted themselves neatly into the empty spaces of Kurama's bookshelf.

Unfortunately, the books were not all that specific, and Kurama had to do an annoying amount of reading between the lines.

Kurama would blame that immersion in research for why he didn't notice the spawn's shifty behavior until the day of. And then it was actually too late.

The spawn was not a good liar.  Horrible didn't begin to cover his acting skills. His tells were so obvious Kurama needed only the particular pitch of his voice, not even his body language or the guilty, sneaking quicksilver of his chakra.

In retrospect, it would be obvious.

Retrospect was too late. On Wednesday afternoon, shortly after classes were finished, the spawn detoured them at a semi-expensive restaurant at the border of the civilian-ninja market divide. (Technically, there was no divide, but in practice civilians shops tended to congregate on one side, ninja-owned and ninja-selling to another.) By unspoken agreement Kurma and the spawn avoided the civilian districts of the village. There was a mutual hostile distaste there, and that, although not the first clue, was the first one Kurama actively noticed. He barely had enough time to ponder the implications, however, before the spawn stopped in front of the restaurant, fixed the collar his best shirt and then Kurama picked up on three very distinct chakra signatures he'd been diligently avoiding.

Kurama's grip on the spawn's wrist turned bruising.

"What the fuck," he hissed.

"We were invited!" said the spawn, and then turned and tried to pat down Kurama's hair.

Kurama caught his hand and repeated: "What the _fuck."_

"I _told_ you about it!" said the spawn, even as his eyes and his mouth did a guilty twist.

Furiously, Kurama racked his memory for the last week’s events.

On Friday the spawn had come in dazzlingly cheerful and proceeded to desecrate the calender with a bright red sharpie, calling, "We have an appointment  A date! Rama it's gonna be awesome!" and Kurama, who had been knee deep in the distance-to chakra ratio of Aburame insects, had filed it away as the Noodle man coming up with a new recipe. Saturday and Sunday he'd been oddly quiet. Then Monday and Tuesday during dinner he'd waxed poetic on how nice Uchiha Mikoto was, and how pretty, and how her lunches were so awesome, but the spawn occasionally had fits of Mikoto-worship and Kurama had at this point made an art of tuning him out.

This morning he'd worn his white dress shirt and black tie, and the pair of dark loafers he always complained made his feet hurt. He'd shucked a similar ensemble at Kurama, except the shirt was blue instead. Kurama had pulled it on half asleep and not noticed the bizarity until the academy — seven thirty a.m. did not belly Kurama's more cognizant moments.

So: In retrospect.

Obvious.

But: "You never thought to mention who this appointment was _with_?"

Now the guilt was actually beginning to ooze. “We - el,” the spawn started. Kurama could feel his face fold in a way that scared off small children and most adults, and the spawn broke down and burst: “But then you wouldn’t _come._ ”  Which was very accurate. Being stuck with three — no four, judging from the signatures, where had the fourth one come from? — Uchihas for an hour in an enclosed space was stuff of Kurama’s nightmares. Especially — and he twitched a little at the neatly sheathed slide of smoke and fire chakra —  fucking _Mikoto._

The spawn tugged at his tie, and looked kind of sideways at the ground. “I did mention it though,” he muttered mulishly.

“You freaking — arrrgh!”

He didn’t know what to address first. The fact that a) the spawn seemed to have finally actually noticed Kurama’s Uchiha distaste (although maybe throwing out a hundred lunch boxes might have been a clue) the fact that b) the spawn was being _sneaky (_ although he was terrible at it and getting stuck in this situation was more Kurama’s own lack of attention) or the that c) Uchiha Mikoto and her brood was ten feet away.

Again, there was no time to sort through his thoughts. The spawn looked down at his watch (he was fucking wearing a watch how did Kurama miss all the signs), yelped: “we’re going to be late!” and then hauled Kurama through the double glass doors of the restaurant.

Inside, the receptionist’s face did a kind of spasming thing civilians did, and then an inversion of chakra, glass edges, and Smokes-and-mirrors was behind them and saying, “over here, Naruto-kun, Menma-kun.”

"Sage-damnit," hissed Kurama.

Uchiha Mikoto had gotten a table with at a far corner, pressed against the wall, with plush seats and clear view of all exits. Uchiha-brat was with her, as was the  owner of the fourth and unknown Uchiha signature: some boy with curly dark hair and a too cheerful spawn-like smile.

“You’re late,” said Uchiha-brat, as the spawn scampered onto the seats with Kurama in tow.

“Welcome,” said Uchiha Mikoto.

Kurama could kill them, all of them, right now, immediately, without remorse. One fully matured sharingan wouldn’t be enough to restrain him fully — nothing short of mangekyou could — and then he wouldn’t be in this situation.

That was something to remember. He could kill them, anytime.

Okay.

Well, he was definitely going to kill the spawn for this, that was for sure.

Kurama hunkered down as Uchiha Mikoto and the spawn made small talk. Mainly it was the spawn talking — school and pranks and how are yous and that’s excellent, Naruto-kun — while Kurama flipped through the menu and the Uchiha brat interjected every two sentences with a correction and an eyeroll, _no you did not beat me in weapons practice, you dumbo, that was Shino._

“And who’re you?” asked the spawn, finally, wheeling to look at curly-hair.

Curly-hair gave a little bow, expression amused.

“Uchiha Shisui, at your service. I tagged along. Little Sasuke-chan’s been talking a lot about you, you know?”

The spawn was momentarily detoured. “... Little Sasuke-chan?” he repeated.

“Shut up Shisui,” said Uchiha-brat.

Unlike the majority of his relatives, Uchiha Shisui was glib and shameless and talkative, and there was something off about his chakra composition that Kurama hadn’t yet figured out. He did impressions throughout the meal (mainly of Smoke-and-Mirrors, who very pointedly stabbed his chopsticks into the webbing of Shisui’s fingers after a particularly high pitched impersonation of a scream.) The the spawn liked him immensely, but the spawn seemed to like every Uchiha he ever met immensely.

Of course, he liked Uchiha Mikoto best of all.

Uchiha Mikoto, who was once trying to drill holes into Kurama’s skull.

Her eyes were dark, her chakra was unreadable, and Kurama restrained himself from levelling the restaurant, the village, the continent. He had the power and the tools and the key, and he repeated _I can I can I can_ in a looping internal mantra to prevent himself from actually doing anything.

Very soon, he reminded himself, he would never have to see her again.

At least the food was good. The quality of the mango pudding was monentarily distracting: he didn’t tend to bother with civilian vendors: either he got kicked out two steps in on principle or got served horrendous food, so this the buttery, silky pudding was a surprise.

“Huh,” said the spawn, midway through his milkshake, and stared cross eyed down his straw at the same revelation.

“Naruto-kun?” said Uchiha Mikoto, settling down her teacup.

“This is good!”

“Is it? I’ve not tried that one personally, but Itachi-chan seems to like as well....”

“Yeah? It’s great. I mean, last time we came out here our chicken kung-pow _sucked._ ”

She tilted her head, long dark hair sliding over one shoulder, voice inquisitive. “It did?”

“Sucked _lots_.”

Something sharpened in her chakra, if not her gaze. The thrum of it had Kurama clutching his chopsticks harder. "Do you eat out often?”

The spawn, of course, was fucking oblivious. He slurped another mouthful of milkshake and went on rambling, eager to please. “Yeah! Sometimes! At old man Teuchi’s. And the ice-cream shop. And when Dog’s here he goes and buys nice things.”  Again: there was crinkle in Uchiha Mikoto's chakra, some stone skipped over the surface of a smooth pond.

“I see,” she said, and then spent the rest of the dinner trying to pile vegetables onto both Kurama and the spawn’s plates.

* * *

 

They went back laden down with ten cups of mango pudding and more vegetables than Kurama wanted to witness, ever.

“Did you just schedule another fucking _dinner —_ ”

“I don’t get why _you don’t like he_ r.”

“We’ve already had this conversation and you — “

“And I say we should all be friends!”

“You say we should make friends with a fence pole. She’s _Uchiha._ ”

“So? She like you lots.”

“She likes — “ Uzumaki Kushina. “She really really doesn’t.”

“Yeah she does.”

“I’m throwing out the entire ramen pantry.”

“What? No! Rama nooooo!”

* * *

 

He broke Namikaze’s seal on a Friday afternoon, barely a cup into still steaming tea. He’d not noticed how close he had gotten. The seal was rhythmic, repetitive work that blurred days and hours, equations smearing into one another, the cross referencing of different attribute functions, the conversion of everything into base matrix. It was no great shock though: this had been a predictable undertaking, compared to Kushina’s seal. Kurama ran his fingers over the spiraling key, and ticked the task off his mental checklist.

Honestly it was anticlimactic.

He folded the key in half, then half again.

That afternoon he burnt all his sealing notebooks: lit them with a spark of chakra-flare and watched the edges darken into soot and charcoal. No point of keeping them anymore when he had both keys, after all. He did it on the balcony. The plants shivered in the wind. It was June, and the sky outside was a crystal dome,the land was singing hymns again, and life was delightful all around. It'd taken six years to wring out Namikaze and Kushina’s secrets but he’d finally done it and he was feeling triumphant and vicious. There would be no more nights thinking and thinking circles about the future. He was so close to freedom the door had already opened and he could see to the other side.

It was June and he wasn’t ready, but _soon_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Eat your vegetables Kurama Mikoto is technically your godmother she knows what’s best.  
> 2\. Kakashi only has himself as an example concerning children; this is pretty much the only reason Kurama has not yet been caught.  
> 3\. Kurama and denial is a very strong combination in this fic.
> 
> ... Where the hell did all my line breaks go? _Ao3 why did you delete my linebreaks. ___


	15. To recognize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer is here, and Kurama is so done with these emotions.

A week before summer vacation was due, Gumball asked:

"Would you. Would you like to come over to play? At my place. Um, my parent's tea shop place. You'll have to ask your parents for permission of course, but mine already said yes and Ino's coming too, and -- and there'll be cake and juice and chocolate milk!"

She said all of this in a rush and one breath, pitch going squeakier and squeaker as she ran out of air towards the end. Thankfully, Kurama was practiced at deducing run-on sentences. Unfortunately, Gumball had been talking really very fast. He blinked.

Over Gumball's shoulder, Yamanaka made a face that suggested constipation and mouthed, _the answer is yes._

It was lunch, and the weather was nice enough to eat outside now. They were sitting underneath the shade of a flowering dogwood tree at the edges of the Academy courtyard. Gumball's expression was one of earnest anxiety, her hands were clenched on her pink chopsticks.  

Kurama had only caught something about parents and permission. Also cake? Refreshments? He didn't have parents. Monkey man and dog-brat were, respectively, unwanted supervisor and pack mule. "Excuse me?"

Gumball's lip trembled; in correlation Yamanaka's constipation suddenly increased.

"She's inviting you to her house as a friend," said Yamanaka, in arched, weighty tones. She mouthed: _And you don't have parents_ so _the answer is yes_.

Kurama looked at Gumball, went and reparsed that zipline of words and blurred sounding vowels she'd spewed out, and said, feeling indulgent: "Huh. Alright, sure."

"... Really?" wondered Gumball, blinking rapidly.

Kurama eyed her. "... Do you want me to say no."

But Gumball was yelping before he finished that sentence: "No!" Her hands fluttered, and then she was grinning, wide and silly and disturbingly like she was having a contained seizure of joy on the spot. "No no no! It's great! Awesome! It's umm. The first weekend after school ends. And my address is --" Kurama watched, bewildered but amused, as she dug around her pockets, all frantic energy, resurfaced with a pencil and a sparkly pink notebook, and quickly scrawled something inside. She tore out the page, "Here!"

"Alright," he repeated, and tucked the page away into his pocket.

* * *

 

Indulgent was really the best descriptor for Kurama's mood. The last few days of the Academy were basically free-for-alls, the teachers having given up trying to corral their brats with the allure of summer break so close it could be tasted, and consisted mainly of long naps outside in the lazy sunshine while the spawn was tearing things apart with his brat cohort. The grass was green, the sky was cornflower blue, the heat in that two-week window of warm but not searing. Carts of shaved ice lined the streets. Kurama allowed himself to dragged through the garbage looking for ramen coupons, indulged in two of the spawn's pranks without a hitch of mood -- transforming Senju Hashirama and Namikaze's faces into that of hideous geisha was actually very soothing -- and even managed to be amiable to Uchiha-brat and to a certain extent, Uchiha Mikoto during the next dinner meeting. At the basis of this cheer was the knowledge that he _could_ . He could destroy everything. He could be gone, and very soon never see Uchiha Mikoto ever again. He could crush this village, and reduce Monkey-man and his stupid hat to atomized cinders. He had both keys. He _could._

It was very refreshing. Kurama allowed Dog-brat the luxury of giving him a piggyback and patted his floofy, floofy hair.

He went to Gumball's on the Saturday after break.

Kurama had not been formally invited anywhere for a very long time, and those occasions had consisted of  grand temples, festivals devoted solely to his honor, sake and food and dancing overflowing into weeks. Of course, processed sugar had not existed then, and Kurama had not had taste buds anyway. Gumball was six. Kurama magnanimously allowed her that it was the thought which counted.

The teashop was on the civilian-ninja divide, tucked a little closer to the civilian side than the ninja one. It was small but modern, and Gumball was sitting with Yamanaka on a bench beneath the awning sipping bubble tea.

Her sandaled feet kicked off the bench when Kurama turned the corner. "Menma-kun!" she waved, beaming.

"Haruno," he said to Gumball.

Yamanaka tossed him an unopened bubble tea package. Excellent, they were on the same page.

The shop was nearly full when they went inside. Small, neatly spaced tables were cramped with humans eating cakes and reading newspapers. Gumball lead them to behind the counter, where Kurama was momentarily under focus from the blonde whom was Gumball's mother, who paused her counting at the till to give Kurama a long look Kurama ignored.

"Hello ma'am," he said, perfectly civil.

It was the politest he'd probably been in a century and a half. Monkey-man would have a seizure. Considering this was the person making most of Kurama's desserts for the next few foreseeable hours ( and also the source of all of Kurama's desserts to have come from Gumball, ever) he felt an exercise in manners was probably deserved.

Kurama had excellent manners, thanks. They were just very very rusty. And selective.

Yamanaka raised an eyebrow when Gumball's mother finally went back to the till, leaving Kurama to follow Gumball into the kitchen. He shrugged at her. After collecting three bowls of shaved ice and handing Yamanaka a plate of watermelon,  Gumball ushered them to follow her upstairs.

Kurama had not come very aware of what activities exactly this play-date was going to entail, but, well, he lived with a six year old. They watched TV shows for an hour, which was boring, but he had shaved ice and Gumball's stash of strawberry pocky to entertain himself with. After that was a hair-styling train. Yamanaka braided Gumball's hair and Gumball tried to braid Kurama's. Later Yamanaka dumped a drawer's worth of nail polish out of her hand bag, declared that everyone had to have their nails done,  and tried to find a colour that did not clash with a) Kurama's shirt and b) his hair. They ate grilled eel with cucumber over rice for lunch and pistachio brownies for dessert, and then went through Gumball's origami instruction book.

It was an excellent day.

* * *

 

When he got back to the apartment, the spawn was sprawled on the couch, squinting over a book.

"Are you reading?" Kurama demanded, blinking, shoe half off and the box of Sakura-mochi Gumball had sent him off with tucked under his arm. It was not as if the spawn was incapable of literacy, but he liked being read to more than figuring out kanji and hiragana himself. "What are you reading?"

"Rama you're back! Uh. Monkey guy. Journey to the West. It's _cool._ But _hard."_

Kurama removed his other shoe. "Huh." Low and behold, this might be indication the spawn was finally developing some literary sense. The spawn flipped a page, and then made a face. He rolled over.

"Rama --"

"Fine, alright, give me a minute," said Kurama.

It was a good day, an excellent day, and he was feeling generous and a little fuzzy and dizzyingly giddy -- like someone had poured carbonated sugar water into his blood. At this point even being made to shovel garbage probably wouldn't have dimmed Kurama's mood (he could smash whatever authority thinking they could make him try). And the spawn, after all, wasn't attempting to wheedle him into reading Namikaze's bibliography. _Journey to the West_ was a good book. The spawn and literary sense -- Who knew this was a combination that exited?

Firstly though, Kurama needed to put his beautiful mochi into the fridge.

The spawn made room on the couch and the book ended up somewhere between two cushions. It was a condensed, simplified, children's version, and thus didn't take very long to finish. The night was still young after the last page was turned: barely sunset, the horizon bracketed with pinkish light while the spawn rooted through his bookbag muttering about the next of the series. He turned the bag upside down. Three comics tumbled out and nothing else.

"Aw, _shoot,_ " he said, and regarded his comics with sad eyes. "Hey Rama, Rama you've read the story already right? Do you remember what happens next?"

"Obviously."

But summarizing a story was not the same as reading it, it really wasn't. Kurama's _Journey to the West_ was also different from the spawn's version. "You can wait and pick up the rest of the books later," he said, and the spawn made a mutinous protesting noise. Rolling his eyes, Kurama flicked the spawn in the forehead. And perhaps it was this day -- it'd been all soft edged. Or perhaps it was the three bowls of shaved ice and five squares of brownies and an innumerable number of strawberry pocky, but Kurama felt loose and light and almost comfortable in his human skin. " _Ugh_ don't sulk," he said. The sun outside was setting the world afire in pink and that too made something in him uncoil, nostalgic. "I'll tell you a story -- another one -- I know better stories than this. Did you know Journey to the West's a derivative, you hellspawn? I assure you that monkey had more than just _that_ adventure."

Kurama knew too many of those "other adventures" --  quotations marks very much include -- because Son was an absolutely insufferable bastard. At least some of it was good blackmail.

"Are there princesses?" demanded the spawn.

Princesses? "Maybe. He didn't tend to be in that business. But fine, let's go with princesses. I remember -- " that one tine where they'd been gathered, four, with Shukaku half passed out and Matatabi derisive. Kurama settled back into the couch, trying to pull up the details of the day. The words came rose almost prenaturally fast to his tongue. "Well, You already know about Son, of course. The Monkey Son Goku, trickster, prankster, occasional thief. And years and years ago, in a land not so far away, he and a bastard of a tanuki were crossing a dessert..."

It didn't hurt. It didn't feel much like anything: which was how talking about his shithead siblings should have been. Like a sunset or a sunrise, that little slice of joy repeated over and over again, until it became mundane. 

* * *

 

The spawn and his cohort liked to gather at the shallow bends of the Naka River. Kurama, although more comfortable in the library, in Gumball's excellently air conditioned tea shop, or in his apartment, was not impartial to the shade provided by the willow trees at the Naka's banks. He was still a lot more partial to the indoors, of course. Sunburns shouldn't be allowed to exist, period, and the crazy high volumes the brat cohort liked to scream in during their mud-throwing or attempted fish-spearing were migraine-inducing. Kurama didn't go to the Naka often. Yamanaka and Gumball went even less. Actually they went only once Kurama knew of and never again, because that once ended up in Yamanaka punching both Dog-brat-number-two and the spawn in the face. Something about beetles and brownies. Kurama had not been there. Considering the list of things the spawn could do to warrant punching was near infinite in length, it wasn't exactly surprising.

Yamanaka was not pleased.

"Boys," she said, derisive and viscous while she scribbled summer homework.

They were in her family's flower shop, perched on huge upside down ceramic pots. The air smelled of soil and greenery, with staccato bursts of flowers adding colour. Kurama had found he quite liked it: inside felt and smelt like the epicenter of Chomei's jungles, crazy colours and crawling vines and huge flowers. Yamanaka Inoichi was a bother -- the potential of Yamanaka mind techniques were a bother -- but, of course, very cheerfully, it was well within Kurama's power to reduce him to powder.   

Kurama shrugged, sucking on a lollipop. He'd either thrown out or finished the homework within four hours. Now he was reading up arithmetic theories again. "Basically."

Gumball and Yamanaka were decent company. They were of course also six, which made them drastically mentally insufficient (and prone to baffling, inane, six-year old behavior) but if they were going by age everyone was drastically insufficient. They understood Kurama's need for cake at least, and Kurama quite delighted in the new retreat that was Gumball's teashop, which served about ten different kinds of over-sugared teas and a dozen delicious snack options he could stuff his face with. The library was still the largest and quietest. The apartment was still the closest. Gumball's teashop however was a new hidden reading nook, which was great, because apart from sweets Kurama liked reading best. Gumball herself was annoying but tolerable — in his mood these days most things were more bemusing than actively irritating — with her too pink hair and occasional attempts to recite textbooks. Once Kurama's baking habit was aired, she very excitedly tried to teach him six different recipes at once.

"You nerds," said Yamanaka, rolling her eyes, but went to fetch ingredients every single baking session.

They made puff pastries, and then the pistachio brownies Kurama was determined to steal, dango and crepes stuffed in fruit and chocolate syrup. Neither of them were tall enough to reach the counter. (Kurama was actually shorter than Gumball, which — seriously ) so Gumball had to drag out stools for them to stand on. She chattered baking tips while Kurama mixed, about the best ways to make dough rise and cakes moist and the effects of substituting whole milk with half. And it came over Kurama, washing flour off his hands and waiting for banana bread to bake in the oven: that he was getting fond of her.

Gumball was saying: "We can eat it with the cherry tea and the chocolate dip from last time — it'll be the _bes_ t."

"You said that with the last three recipes," Kurama pointed out, and felt himself pause.

She raised her head from the oven and assured, "This one is _really_ the best," Looking extremely ecstatic at the thought of chocolate dip and banana bread. There was flour on her cheek.

It was not some lightning strike revelation. This was slow familiarity, built up rapport over time, settling like mist or fog or some other just as effusive thing. Kurama was standing in Gumball's very small upstairs kitchen and he knew where the apron was and he knew where the milk was kept and he knew Gumball hummed stupid, silly children's tunes when she was whisking eggs. He knew these things about her: that she had good literacy but poor articulation — pronounced her vowels with the edge of a lisp — liked carnations and actually disliked Sakura flowers, wanted to be Yamanaka when she grew up and always put two sugars into her teas. She was six years old and very small and had a weird habit of shooting him crazy too wide smiles. And he was going to kill her, of course he was.

She was part of this village. It wasn't as if Kurama could just... not destroy the village. She'd die during it. The process. She would. Children did not survive the poison onslaught of Kurama's chakra. And she was six years old and training to be a ninja but right now she was about ninety-eight percent a baker, and she had nothing to do with this,  not like the spawn or Dog-brat or the Monkey-man. And there was supposed to be a wall there, between Gumball and Kurama, between Kurama and the damned village.

And Gumball was saying: "We still have the custard filling from yesterday, do you think it'll taste nice as a jam?"

"No," said Kurama. He turned off the tap.

"Really? Is it too bitter?"

It wasn’t as if he could what? Throw her out of the village? Convince her to immigrate to Tea?

By some miracle Kurama stayed another half an hour. When he left, slipped out into the July heat, Gumball was still humming show tunes behind him.

Dirt roads. Market place smells. Marketplace sounds. Buildings built of wood and brick and tile. Somewhere beyond Noodle man was probably preparing for the lunch rush. Kurama tossed that thought from his mind as quickly as it came, scowling fiercely.

He felt for Kushina’s seal and thought: _easy, so, so easy._

The village was still the village; people and dusty roads and chakra signatures, and the urge to watch it crumble to wreck and ruin was like a photograph pinned to the back of Kurama's eyes. It was just — _Gumball_. There was supposed to be a wall there, and he'd — broken it down himself, riding on that high of indulgence and giddy joy and careless freedom -- and he’d — not noticed at all, that wall crumbling. Now there was just air and space where that divide was supposed to be and it didn't work like this, he didn't have the time or energy or processing for this.

He ended up on the bastard Namikaze's stupid rocky head, stomping down vindictively on one stupid spike of rocky hair, pacing circles and trying to chase the tail end of this — dilemma over and over in his head.

No answers were forthcoming.

It was all _stupid._ Stupid problem. Stupid, absurd situation.

Kurama paced some more, did not reach any kind of conclusion, and by nighttime had only worked himself up to a wrong-footed, vicious rage, which dulled his moral issues but wasn’t any good for solving the problem; nor was it very mature, or actually productive. He didn’t care. He scowled fiercely at the the cracks in Namikaze’s stupid stone head, kicking a hair spike. Culminating anger had boiled the problem down to: _Fuck you Namikaze, Kushina, Uchiha Fucking Madara, i_ n that order, which was good and euphoric but once again not actually helpful.

_Urrrgh._

* * *

Half to twelve when Kurama got back to the apartment, and the spawn was asleep, sprawled like a starfish across half the bed, cheek pressed to a pillow and making wheezy snoring noises, drool dribbling from his chin. He didn’t twitch when Kurama sat down next to him, dipping the mattress. Moonlight shaded his hair pale ash. A stain sat on his shirt collar.

In the dark, the night, and Kurama could feel the pulse of his own chakra, like a heartbeat, red and twining violet with the spawn’s puddly blue. He watched the rise and fall of the spawn’s chest and put his hand over the spawn’s small-child throat, over the thin skin, the delicate membrane, the thumping rush of blood. Once upon a time years and years ago that first October night when he'd been trapped and helpless he'd thought about doing this same thing,thought about reaching out with his teeth and tearing out this dratted boy’s windpipe, this legacy with Kurama’s freedom strung around his neck.

It would be so easy, now. The spawn would never even try to fight back, seven years later. But it was different, now —  now Kurama’s freedom was finally his own again.

And his father had told him once: _children are not to be burdened by the legacies of their forefathers,_ like it was that simple, like this world was kind enough to leave them with blank canvases.

It was never that simple.

How could it be? It was sunk into this culture: these burdens, this curse, the blood and war and trenches. They’d tried, Kurama and his siblings. Perhaps they had not tried hard enough, but they’d tried, and the world had taken them in and wrung out their blood and air and bones. Kurama had a duty; he had a family and siblings and an earth spinning chakra that could not govern itself, and the only thing humans seemed to have wrought in their history was war and more war. It was sunk into them, the curse, and none of them were exempt — not Gumball or Yamanaka or Uzumaki Naruto. Kurama hated him and hated him — always bothersome, fucking Uchiha magnet — and Kurama maybe loved him — seven years of shared space and shared time, this stupid stupid boy who thought noodles and friendship and Kurama could fix any problem in the world. But it wouldn’t last, it would never last. Humans grew to follow the steps of their ancestors.

Maybe it was for the best then, that the spawn would not live long enough to lose his wonder.

Kurama raised his hand from the spawn’s throat to touch the markings on the spawn’s cheek, feather light. And the spawn twitched and mumbled: “Rama?”

“Go back to sleep,” said Kurama.

He sat on the edge of the bed, watching the spawn turn, the shift of blankets, watched the spawn's breath even, and felt the hours pass.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The first half of this chapter Kurama was smiling so much about 95% of the cast was completely bewildered.  
> 2\. Whenever the anger leaves Kurama has to make himself deal with actual, honest emotions.


	16. A stone Rolling

“Are you sad again?” asked the spawn, the next day at dinner.

Kurama was peeling pears. The spawn sat on the countertop and kicked his heels against the cupboards underneath, occasionally sneaking raspberries from the fruit spread when he thought Kurama wasn’t looking. The crinkle of his shirt was always dead giveaway.

“No,” said Kurama.

“You really sure? Really really?” he could _feel_ the spawn pouting dubiously, no direct visual needed. _Tap-thunk-tap_ . The rhythm of heels hitting cupboard wood changed. “But you _seem_ sad again! You’re quiet, since morning! And frowny, and quiet _._ So: _sad_.”

Sad was a word that dragged to mind four year olds covered in snot and tears over crushed cake, of the spawn after whatever latest tragic animal movie, lip trembling and trying valiantly not to cry. It was a emotion from a child’s vocabulary and was suited for such a child’s emotional simplicity. Kurama had felt many things in many years, but the last time he felt sad and purely so was — Father, probably. These days sad was like a drop in a brewing storm of emotion — rage, bitterness, causticity, indignance.

But today Kurama was none of those things either.

“I’m not sad,” he told the spawn, in his _don’t say stupid things_ tone. He cut the pear into bite sized squares and tossed them into the fruit spread.

No, Kurama was just decided.

* * *

 

The spawn’s newest glitter-bomb project was laid out on the living room table. Kurama batted pink and silver packets to the side to make room for his fruit platter, but that really did not dissuade the stray bits of glitter clinging to freaking everything, twinkling merrily. He gave it up as a lost cause when the spawn plonked himself down, reached for the packets again. Armed with paper towel rolls, scissors, and a stapler, it seemed today’s dessert was also going to be prank-preparation time.

The spawn stuffed a pear cube into his mouth, and then started narrating his newest plot.

“So you know, me and Kiba, we’re thinking of getting over one over Kisa-sensei. He _double dared us_ and said we couldn’t do it, so we’re thinking of dropping these and the dye packs in his shower. Kiba knows where he lives and we egged Shika to help with the plan — “

Kurama watched him, eyes half lidded, as the spawn very carefully tied two ends of a string together into a knot. There was glitter in the spawn’s hair and on one cheek, tape running a neat row on the side of his shorts.

“— it took _forever_ before before he agreed but he told us we needa check for traps at the window cuz Sensei’s chuunin — “

His fingers were quick. Glitter fluttered and dusted Kurama’s knee. This was the spawn right now, some ridiculous energy buzzer of an idiot who made built things from glitter and paint and staples and string. He talked too much. He talked much too loud.

“ — and we were gonna invite Sasuke but Itachi’s taking him out to train that day and also, didja know Sasuke’s birthday is next week? Didja? He invited me to his party!”

This was the spawn right now: an idiot that thought ramen and Kurama and friendship was all that was needed to fix any and all the hurts in the world. He thought friendships were promises and promises were friendships. He thought both were unbreakable.

“—Do you think _we s_ hould have a birthday party this year? I mean, yeah yeah, the Hero’s festival is on the same day but it’ll be better than the Hero’s festival! Or… can do it the weekend before? We’ll invite everyone! Even Ino-witch cuz you like her—”

If that was what he stayed, just this snap-shot right here and now, than perhaps it would be alright if Kurama didn’t kill him.

“We’ll get the best cake —“

But it didn’t work that way; humans grew up and away, their childhoods unravelling like silk cocoons to thread. Ninja children grew up and became adults with ninshuu turned Father-damned weaponry under their skin, the blood of the land under their fingernails, broken and blaming the world for their own poison. Right now the spawn built things of glitter and thought friendship was unbreakable. Once upon a time Namikaze and Uzumaki Kushina had been children, too. Of fucking course they’d been. Look at where they ended up.

So it was better, it was a mercy. Because if Kurama could not freeze him in the snapshot of this moment then he could perhaps at least preserve this memory, when all the sadness the spawn knew were of small-child things, when the stupidest, smallest marvel made him so happy he blazed.

“It’s gotta beat Sasuke’s cake yanno, especially since there’s two of us —”

Kurama thought he maybe loved him. But it wasn’t enough. He’d been hurting and angry too long for that. The spawn did not know what he was and he would never know. Kurama had dues to pay.

“— Rama help me choose a present? I know it’s Sasuke _bu_ t — ”

Kurama blinked. The spawn was looking at him with big, wobbly blue eyes, which Kurama had not been affected by since… ever, actually. No one was affected by them, except maybe Dog-brat. Rolling the last bit of the conversation in his head ended him up at — of course it was the damned Uchiha brats. He looked briefly up at the ceiling.

Well, it wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

“Alright, you,” he acquiseased, slouching forward, just keeping the edge of distate out of his voice. “Make a list. I’ll help narrow.” The spawn made a fist bump of victory up into the air, along with an exclamation that sounded like “ _oh yeah.”_

Kurama owed it to him, maybe, to watch his eyes go round and shining, to help collect these moments of simple joy.

Uchiha Sasuke was turning seven years old in two weeks.

By the time his eighth birthday came next July, the spawn would not be alive to attend it. No one in Konoha would, if things went to plan.

 

* * *

 

On July twenty-third the spawn left at ten in the morning with a gift-wrapped book on advanced shuriken techniques and its accompanying Iron-made shuriken set tucked under his arm, courtesy of Dog-brat. He came back at five in the afternoon, a giant white icing stain on his shirt, grinning like a loon. Kurama was just wrapping up a thought on chakra suppressors that didn’t, you know, actively shut down the chakra system while doing the suppressing, which was an unfortunate flaw in the stronger suppressor designs. He hoped this would be the end of Uchiha-related phenomena for the time being.

(It wasn’t.)

* * *

 

Sunday, two weeks later, August humidity at his back, Kurama sat in the Monkey-man’s office, watching the Monkey-man get yelled at.

By the spawn, obviously.

“What do you _mean_ we can’t go to the dinner? We were invited! _Auntie Mikoto_ invited us! I already went and asked Ino-witch for flower choices! Old _Maaaaan!”_

The spawn’s wail was like grating glass. Kurama may have forgotten how exactly loud the spawn was mid-tantrum. Judging by the twitch of the Monkey-man’s chakra, he was not the only one.

“Naruto-kun —”

“She’s the prettiest and the nicest and I can’t be a — a _bastard_ and stand her up!”

The Monkey man attempted to interject and made it exactly half a sentence. “Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun’s family is currently undergoing troubles— “

“I went to their house for the birthday and it was fine it was awesome it was the best why you telling me I can’t go _now —“_

Kurama had the considerable hunch that the Monkey-man had allowed the spawn there and then for the same reasons Kurama had. That birthday party had involved the entirety of the brat cohort and beyond, not just the spawn, and prevalent was at least one non-Uchiha adult supervisor.

“— That’s not fair _at all_ Old — “ And then the spawn paused. His hands stilled rotor turn in the air.  “Wait what do you mean trouble? Is Auntie Mikoto in trouble? Is it — “ Now he was obviously racking his brain for things that constituted as trouble, face scrunched in worried concentration. “Money? Rent? Diarrhea? _Cancer?”_ He stared at the Monkey-man anxiously.

Kurama could only wish it was cancer. The Monkey-man sighed. “It’s nothing quite so urgent, Naruto-kun. Mikoto is very able to take care of herself. And your dinner has not been cancelled, It’s merely rescheduled. I talked to Mikoto-kun — she said that she would meet you at the LilyPad for dinner at six of the same day.”

“Oh,” said the spawn, momentarily mollified by this new information. It took him a brief sarcoma to remember his original protest; his lip dipped back into an angry pout. “But why can’t we go to their house? Sasuke’s house is great. There’s a pond _and_ the river nearby _and_ all the watermelon we can eat, ever.”

The Monkey-man said: “It would be… better not to disturb the Uchiha clan at this moment.”

Glowering, the spawn crossed his arms. “What’s _that_ mean.”

He sounded like he knew exactly what it meant and was daring for someone to say it to his face.

The Hokage eyed him. Kurama side-eyed him. Sneakines and… whatever the heck this development was. Tact? Being not as dumb as a box of rocks? Kurama was not sure he liked it, exactly. The spawn developing logical reasoning skills was not a part of his plans, although how much foresight could the spawn actually build in seven months was questionable.

“It means...  exactly what you think it means,” Kurama said around a mouthful of soup, still side-eying.

The spawn’s glower redirected. His angry squirrel face scrunched into a somehow even more outraged squirrel face, which cowed Kurama exactly not at all, the amateur. After a few ineffective seconds the spawn transferred his scowl to the Monkey-man.

The Monkey-man drank his tea.

The spawn’s expression drooped. His shoe thunked against Kurama’s chair leg.

“So… if we’re eating outside the problem goes away? Cuz we don’t bother Sasuke’s relatives?” asked the spawn a little dubiously.

The problem was more or less vice-versa.

“That would be the intention,” agreed the Monkey-man.  “Naruto, Mikoto-kun is going to be busy for the foreseeable future.” His tone gentled. “Even beyond the compound… it would be best to give her space for the time being.”

And now Kurama was side-eying _him._

The Monkey-man had been perfectly alright with the last unfortunate dozen of Uchiha-Mikoto related, outside of-the-compound dinner dates. What was he attempting to do _now?_ And his sentence indicated that Uchiha Mikoto would find the spawn’s presence bothersome, which was stupid because, well, Uchiha Mikoto was as invested in the spawn as the spawn was infatuated with her. She was his unfortunate godmother.

Look Kurama would gladly be rid of Uchiha Mikoto, but two hundred dumped lunch boxes later and he was very aware the reverse was not true.

The spawn, too, narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Of course it was a different kind of suspicion. “Old man…. Are you _sure_ it's not diarrhea?” asked the spawn accusingly. “It’s okay! Auntie is still the best and I love her lots and lots even if her poop is weird coloured!”

“... No Naruto,” said the Monkey-man.

The spawn ignored him and went barreling right down this new train of thought. “I’ll bring the bitter-medicine Dog got that’s real good for stomach aches and lots and lots of tea — “

“Naruto.”

“And dinner! Soup for dinner! Cuz that’s what you should give sick people. I have practice. Rama gets sick all the time like _all_ the time.”

“I’m aware, Naruto-kun.”

“Of course since it is his mom Sasuke can — “

“ _Naruto-kun_ ,” emphasized the Monkey-man, and by some minor miracle the spawn shut up. Kurama’s gaze flickered. That was not the tone the Monkey-man used with the spawn, often. “It is of clan matters,” there was a set finalty to his words. “She needs time to sort them through.”

The spawns face had scrunched into something mutinous. “But I’ll still get to see her right?”

“It would be better if you did not, until the matter is settled. But you’ll have to ask Mikoto-kun,” delegated the Monkey-man.

“I _will,_ ” said the spawn determinedly.

For all that he did not care for Konohan hierarchy, Kurama did know the basics of how it worked. If the Monkey-man didn’t want Uchiha Mikoto near the spawn all he had to do was order her, and of course this was a Uchiha-Mikoto problem, it was always a Uchiha problem. If Monkey-man wanted the spawn away from Uchiha Mikoto that would be the bigger hurdle.

Thus this… entire suggestion conversation.

Kurama chewed on his spoon. His side-glance at the Monkey-man did not decrease.

There was a glaring continuity error here.

Something had changed.

* * *

 

The afternoon of, they waited at the front of the appointed restaurant at  5:30 pm, the spawn with a little bouquet he’d picked up from Yamanaka’s flower shop tucked under his arm. It was eye-searingly purple, hydrangeas and spiking statice and little blooms of blue-pink forget-me nots. The spawn checked his watch and bounced anxiously on his toes. He did this every single time, no matter how many Uchiha-Mikoto related dinners he went to. “Five-forty-five, Five-forty-six,” he muttered, and Kurama felt brush-smoke chakra step into range. He unslouched.

Chakra inverted.

The spawn startled and blinked and beamed. “Auntie Mikoto! Sasuke! Itachi-san!”

Uchiha Mikoto wore a summer yutaka patterned with white and red chrysanthemums, a white obi. The Uchiha-brat and Smoke-and-mirrors were in the usual high collared shirts and dark pants of their clan. The spawn waved. Then he seemed to remember exactly what he was carrying.

“Here!” He presented the bouquet, and then kind of… blushed. Kurama pretended this scene didn’t exist. “It was supposed to be. Um. House gift! But then the Old Man said we weren’t eating there but i’d already got it ordered so… here?”

Uchiha Mikoto smiled.  “Thank you, that’s very sweet of you, Naruto-kun.” She took it, examined it, and then placed it carefully away into the sleeve of her yutaka.H

The spawn rubbed the back of his neck. “No problem!”

Uchiha-brat was making a face. The spawn redirected his attention to make a face right back.

He didn’t breach the subject until they were well into the restaurant, the sound of conversation a muffler on the spawn’s almost tentative voice.  “Hey Auntie. You’re okay right?” the spawn was glancing up at her with huge eyes, and Uchiha Mikoto glanced down. “Cuz the old man said it wasn’t diarrhea or anything like that and you guys are rich so it can’t be money and I dunno what else problems adults have, but even if it is diarrhea I’ll just let you — “

Something sharp and ugly rippled through her chakra, just a momentarily crack in that sea of calm, and then Uchiha Mikoto was laughing, a fine trembling in her shoulders, some tinkling sound from her mouth. The spawn blinked, owlish. Tucking a stray lock of hair behind one ear, she smiled down at him. “I am in perfect health, Naruto-kun, you’ve no need to worry about that.”

“Oh... Really? Cool?”

“My mom’s not gonna have _diarrhea_ ,” said Uchiha-brat in a kind of horrified distaste, and then gave the spawn a _why-would-you-even-think-that_ look.

“But the old man said — “

A hand landed between both the spawn and Uchiha-brat’s shoulder blades. Uchiha-Mikoto sent Kurama a conniving look, one eyebrow raised, smile on her mouth, and Kurama had absolutely no idea what it meant. Faintly scolding, she said, “Right now is dinner time, you two, no talk of sickness should be at the table. Come, Itachi-chan should have our reservation ready.”

The spawn glanced up at her, uncertain. “He said —”

“Later, Naruto-kun.”

Later turned out to be after dinner, which — well, Kurama could accuse the Uchihas of many things but scroungy they were not. Huge plates of noodles were ordered, along with a wide selection of side-dishes, enough amitsu for both Kurama and Smoke-and-mirrors and some kind of rice-cake served up on gilded little pots. It took an hour and a half to finish (there were no leftovers, because the spawn’s stomach was an actual black hole). By then the sky outside was a darkening dusty lavender-gold of summer evenings.

At the door of the restaurant, Uchiha Mikoto turned to her eldest and said: “Take Sasuke home for me, Itachi-chan? I’ll walk Naruto-kun and Menma-kun back to their apartment.”

Smoke-and-mirrors paused. His chakra paused.

Kurama tipped his head to the side.

“Mother,” he said, slowly.

“No one’s going to jump your mum,” she said, half-teasing, but there was something sharp in her eyes. “You can check on me later, if you’re quite that worried.”

Clan troubles, the Monkey-man had said. Kurama felt his eyes narrowing without his explicit permission. _Clan troubles._

“... Very well.”

Uchiha-brat looked from his mother, to Smoke-and-mirrors and then back. He turned to the spawn. “If some jumps mom bite the bastard.”

“I’ll kick him in the _nuts,”_ affirmed the spawn.

A smile curved on Uchiha Mikoto’s mouth, amused.

Then there was a pop of chakra, a shunshin, and Smoke-and-mirrors and Uchiha-brat were gone.

Warm air sluiced through Kurama’s hair. It was a humid night — all summer nights in Konoha were. The streetlamps were just beginning to gain a glow in the approaching dark.  

“Shall we go?” asked Uchiha Mikoto.

 

* * *

 

“Your parents would have been very proud of you two.”

They detoured in a small, out of the way park not ten minutes from Kurama’s apartment, with stone benches and dogwood trees just past their blooming season, the field covered in tall grass and a mat of yellow dandelions. The spawn sat by Uchiha Mikoto’s side, on the bench. Cross legged in the grass, Kurama was plucking dandelions and stringing them into flower chains by rote, because apparently that was what happened after enough time spent in proximity with Yamanaka.

He paused mid-chain. The spawn went: “parents?”

Kurama had allowed the detour because he’d been expecting light shed on the whatever Uchiha situation the Monkey-man was being purposefully obtuse about. Obviously that was a miscalculation. He thought, quick but not panicking, If he smacked her with the flower chain —

“I have Itachi-chan and Sasuke myself,” she said, “I can tell. Whomever they were, they would have been very proud of you.”

False alarm. Oops. She was still following the Monkey-man's law.

“Especially your mother."

Kurama turned. There were streetlamps in the park. Streetlamps, and fireflies, and together they settled a pale ember glow over each straggled bit of grass and gilded the sheen of Mikoto's hair and eyes.

There was something dark and soft flickering in her gaze, something in the set of her mouth, something unspooling in her chakra.  Like a shiver Kurama could nearly taste the Sharingan behind the black of her pupils, but that was all they remained — black, not red. Uchiha Mikoto’s chakra uncoiled and it sung a familiar song: something dark and bitter and furious and raging and not at all like the expression at her face, looking at the spawn and Kurama through a veil of black hair, hooded and searing and soft.  

Kurama looked at her and could have laughed because he knew that roil of emotion. Oh, she was angry, oh, she wanted to crush _something_ beneath her heel and into the ground. It wasn’t the spawn. She was angry on behalf _of t_ he spawn.

Uchiha Mikoto blinked, and the high tide broke.

Emotion rolled back, the ocean smoothed into glass. She raised her head and then smiled, everything hidden again, and plucked the drooping flower chain from Kurama’s fingers.

“Did you know,” she said, to a spawn who had gone silent, to Kurama, whose attention was razor focused now. “Once upon a time, the Sage of Six paths had two sons?”

_Did you know, once upon a time, the old man Sage had eleven children?_

“That's the guy who made ninja isn’t he?”

_And he was the founder of ninshuu, the father of the Cycle._

“He was the originator of chakra, yes. His sons were named Indra and Asura. The Uchiha clan are descendants of Indra, the Senju and the Uzumaki are of Asura.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, smiled at the spawn’s moon-wide eyes. “Do you know what that means, Naruto-kun?”

“We’re related to the _Sage of Six paths_?”

She laughed. “Diluted, but absolutely. And that means you and me, Naruto-kun, Menma-kun, even if we are separated by two thousand years of lineage, we are still family of a sort, ne?”

“That’s — “ said the spawn, too-big eyes. “Yeah.”

She flicked the tip of his nose, smiling. “So if anyone is trying to give you trouble, Naruto-kun, come to Auntie Mikoto. She’ll kick their ass.”

That finally spurred the spawn out of his shocky wide-eyed state. “Auntie! That’s a _bad word._ ”

“Auntie can say all the bad words she wants, Naruto-kun.”

“No she can’t. You're - you’re.” He pouted, crossing his arms. “And you don’t need to kick their ass. I’ll kick their ass!”

“As a full jounin, isn’t Auntie a little more adept at that than you are, hmm?”

“No! If anyone tries anything weird or icky or sucky I’ll kick their ass. You’re a lady, and the bestest, so you don’t need to kick ass, even if you’re _really really_ good at it. That’s why _I’m g_ oing to grow up to be a super-awesome ninja! So I can kick everyone’s ass that looks at me funny, or Rama funny, or you funny.” He looked at her with a mulish set to his chin. “Okay?”

Uchiha Mikoto threw her head back and laughed and laughed.

The spawn blinked. “Uh…. Auntie?”

“That is — ” Her guffaws shook her shoulders, too loud for that thin frame, and Kurama looked at her and felt her chakra blooming again, devotion and startled delight in equal measure. She’d learned all her loudest emotions from Kushina. “That’s an admirable goal, Naruto-kun.”

“Yeah!”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, grinning. “Very much admirable.”

The spawn beamed back, proud. “So, when the old man said — well, I can’t fight germs, but not diarrhea right? If anyone’s giving you trouble I can _totally_ chase them off.“

“Hmm,” her tone was contemplating. Kurama felt the mirth drain from her chakra, as if the Monkey-man’s name was an unwanted reminder. Her tone was still light. “... What exactly did Hokage-sama say, Naruto-kun?”

“Um.” He peered at Mikoto. “He said you had clan troubles. And we shouldn’t bother you.”

“You’ll never be a bother to me, Naruto-kun.”

The spawn flushed.

She continued slowly. “But Hokage-sama is… partially correct on the rest. My clan is experiencing difficulty right now, and I — “

“Are you gonna be too busy to see us?” blurted the spawn.

“I am needed. But — no, hopefully not. And if so, it’ll only be a little while, Naruto-kun, don’t make that face. I’ll still be making you both lunch, don’t worry.” She raised an eyebrow at Kurama. “One of these days I hope you actually eat those bentos, Menma-kun.”

“Don’t push it,” said Kurama.

“... Will you keep making them forever?” asked the spawn.

She ruffled his hair. “If you want me to, Naruto-kun.”

 

* * *

 

She walked them back to the apartment and the spawn was actually radiating emotion like a frizzled generator, erratic and continuous and overwhelming at the same time, joy and anxiousness and joy and more joy in loops. He bellowed: “LATER AUNTIE!” and waved and waved until she was nothing but a dot on a distant street, and then kept waving even afterwards. His eyes were shining when he turned to Kurama, the faint film of water against the blue. He grinned. He scrubbed the heel of his palm against his eyes and whooped and swung Kurama round in a hug until Kurama kicked him and pried his arms off.

“Rama!” crowed the spawn, and tried again.

He spent the entire night making unintelligible ecstatic noises while rolling on the covers, recounting the afternoon.

Kurama reminded himself that the spawn was six, annoyance was just his nature, and this was, for all intents and purposes, important to him. It helped a little. A week ago it’d been July and now it was August — the turning of human months and dates. Soon it would be September, October, January and March. How many months? Eight. Eight months.  

Only eight months left.

Kurama owed it to the spawn.

“And she said — Rama she said f _orever_ . And she said I’d _never_ be a bother to her. And she said _ad-mir-a-ble._ Rama what’s admirable? What’s that mean?”

For once Kurama was paying full attention to the spawn’s rambling. “Someone respectable,” he said, clicking his tongue and carding through definitions. Very little people had ever been admirable to Kurama. His father, of course. Chomei and Matatabi. A few wandering priests, a few men with dreams and crazy, beautiful ideas and builder hands.  “Of merit. Of worth.”

“That’s what she said!” breathed the spawn. “I’m admirable.”

He rolled again and grinned like a silly person. “And she also said — she said. That thing with the Sage and the clans. She said — “ he voice grew hushed, as if beholding something of great wonder and value. “We’re _family_.”

Ah yes. Uchiha and Senju and Uzumaki, as if they’d not spent thousand years tearing one another apart. But that's not been the point, had it. The point had been Uchiha Mikoto trying to hold on. “Mmm.”

“She _said_ ,” repeated the spawn, and then didn’t finish that sentence because he’d cut himself off with a whoop.

 

* * *

 

(Hours later, into the night, and he would still be awake, face buried into Kurama’s shoulders and arms around him in a chokehold, repeating the words: “she said we were _family,”_ but his voice would be blotted with the tremble of tears, and Kurama’s shirt would be wet and snot-covered and he could feel the press of the spawn’s grin, mouthing, _“she said we were family.”_ The spawn caught in the storm between two overwhelming emotions. They were children’s words — sadness and happiness. They were all-consuming and all encompassing and too simple for words. They seemed fitting for a child.

And Kurama would close his eyes and think: If he could freeze the spawn in the snapshot of this moment —

He couldn’t, of course.

There were eight months until March.)

 

* * *

 

Uchiha Mikoto had said: _the Sage of six paths invented Ninjutsu._

Ootsuki Hagoromo had not invented ninjutsu. Hagoromo had invented Ninshuu.

Here was what Father had taught the humans: how to wash one’s hands in the rivers and lakes and know the balance of its minerals. How to coax the rice paddies to grow tall and strong. How to carve from stone the temples of sky and earth, layering marble only in chakra, no cement. To kill is a sin, but to kill is also this life’s cycle. Do it quickly, cleanly, show no disrespect. Give them your name. All things come from the earth and the great flow; all things are kin in spirit. Kill only for food, and only if one must, and for no reason other. There is no other reason why one ever should.

Here was what they’d taught the humans, those two wayward prodigal sons: Dig your trenches and smell the burning flesh and hear the earth scream on your war fronts. Did you know? Ame would bear only  mud and rain for twenty five years. Fire’s northern forests were nothing but dark cinders, all its inhabitants displaced.

Uchiha Mikoto had said: _the Sage of Six paths had two sons._

Once upon a time Ootsuki Hagoromo had eleven children, and the first nine he bestowed upon his legacy of balance. The Tailed Beasts had no need to eat. They had by the Ninshuu religion no need to kill. “You will be their guiding light,” said Father, because he had hoped for Ashura and Indra good, fruitful lives, but in his nine he’d placed a legacy.

Give and take. Take and Give. Just give, a kindness. That is one cycle.

Ninja always took and never gave. From the earth and the air and ninshuu and themselves. Did they think this was their birthright? Chakra is a privilege.

October tenth and Kurama had wanted to see them _slathered in their own slaughter —_

Give and take. Take and give, _always give, my nine, my children, because you can, because it is right, because kindness is our path to a better age —_

Kurama knew how to take, he did. He could take lives and hopes and he haunted dreams and these days he laughed at carnage.

But he knew, too, how to give, and he had dues that he owed.

 

* * *

 

Kurama armed himself with two bowls of Amitsu — one as an apology, one as a bribe — a packet of extremely sparkly gel pens, and a cookbook on Western-water style sweet recipes. Then he went and stalked down adequate transport, hauled himself onto Dog-brat’s back, and managed the half-an-hour walk to Gumball’s tea-shop in two minutes.

They were sitting under the shade of a brightly coloured umbrella, at one of the outside tables. “ _You_ ,” said Yamanaka, vaguely ominous, and Kurama rolled his eyes gave one bowl of amitsu to Yamanaka, the other to Gumball, and then stacked both cookbook and gel pens at Gumball’s elbow.

Yamanaka inspected the Amitsu. “You avoided us for a month and this is your peace-offering?”

“This is Haruno’s peace offering. It’s your bribe,” said Kurama, tugging the cookbook open at a dog-eared page that showed popsicles made in yogurt and smoothied fruit and swerved it so Gumball could read the words. “Strawberry or banana?”

Yamanaka made a disparaging noise, eyed him, and began to tuck into her bowl of jello and sweet azuki.

Gumball was looking between the pens and the amitsu. “Menma-kun — “

“It’s Kurama.”

“Is that where Rama came from? Wow. Stupid nickname.”

“You can keep calling me Menma, thanks.”

Gumball was looking between them, bewildered and eyes owlish. “Men — _Kur_ ama-kun? Um. You didn’t have to — “

Yamanaka scoffed, “Sakura cried after the first week. Yeah, you had to.”

… What was it with larval humans and crying? Ugh.

“Ino!” protested Gumball.

Kurama sighed. “Oh just take it, Haruno. Banana or strawberry?”

Kurama owed Yamanaka nothing. Kurama owed Dog-brat and the Monkey-man and Uchiha Mikoto nothing. He owed the spawn — something. He owed Gumball cake and books and time and the first two he could fulfill and the latter — well, he was still working on that Immigration to Tea country thing. She was extraordinarily civilian and she had nothing to do with this entire — decibel — and with her aptitude she should and probably would drop out of that stupid ninja academy to take over her family’s teashop. Kurama had nothing against tea-shop owners. He had nothing against Gumball. There was no legacy in her, not like the spawn.

Eight months. Her birthday was at the tail-end of march. If all went to plan —

He owed her a name. _Kurama._ If she were to die by his actions he owed her a name.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that.

Gumball chewed her lip and then scrutinized the recipe. Her hair was braided neatly; her headphones hung around her skinny neck. “Strawberry banana. Mama just bought new molds too.”

Kurama knew there was a reason he liked Gumball.

“What kind of molds?” Gumball was listing ingredients under her breath. Yamanaka looked at them, huffed, leaned back, muttering something about baking nerds. “Also,” he said, remembering. “What do six year olds do at a birthday party?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you saw the /18 at the top regarding chapter count -- yep. We're in the final stretch, at least for Arc I. This story has been split into 3 arcs from the very beginning, and was originally supposed to be just one work, but after debating with myself over the last week and eying the word count for Arc I, I decided it was a lot more sensible to split it into chunks. The point of Arc I was supposed to be set up. It ballooned from 30k to 77k, so... yeah. It's ending now in both a linear plot-wise sense and as the first part of Kurama's character arc, and from here on there's still one chapter and an interlude to go. 
> 
> Tell me what you liked, tell me what you didn't guys! Leave a kudos or a comment on your way out!


	17. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point i've just given up on editing. I'll edit after I have this entire story out i'm one interlude away damnit.

A man settled deliberately across from Kurama, on the opposite chair within the little library reading nook.  

By human standards he looked old. He had a lined, hawkish face and leathery skin. A dark Kimono. Swathes of bandages across one eye. He propped a wooden walking stick against the side of the chair and his chakra was a neat, contained coil natural to trained ninja. Kurama had no idea who the heck he was, although considering no one came to this section of the library, ever, which was how Kurama preferred it, the same could not be said for vice-versa.

Since the man was firstly not a Uchiha (although his chakra did have that interesting shifting quality of genjutsu types) and secondly not anyone Krama recognized from his stint in either Kushina or Mito, Kurama ignored him. Falling into neither the former or latter categories made him unimportant.  In terms of threat levels, at this point pretty much everyone was unimportant — unless that someone had a mangekyou resting in their possession.  In terms of personal importance Kurama already had his roster filled, thanks.

This was a visit with intention and Kurama had zero interest in whatever the heck the man wanted.

He flipped a page. _A History of Cargo and Commerce Over the Elemental Nations._ Quite fascinating, actually.

“What do you think about the current village system, Uzumaki Menma?”

Kurama narrowed his eyes at his book, but didn’t glance up. What was this — a test? He could read the man’s chakra fine — being of Indra’s lineage always made the Uchiha more opaque than they should be — and nothing about it suggested suspicion. Or curiosity. It was just very intense and very focused on Kurama’s response.

“It exists,” Kurama said flatly, because that was the least offensive answer he could think of.

Repressed approval flickered in the man’s chakra. _Ah ha._ “You don’t sound very pleased with it,” he noted.

Kurama deigned not to answer. He had no time for Konohan political bullcrap and no patience for anyone trying to make him act like a rigged battery in any way, and really, it did not take a genius to figure out why someone would approach Kurama. The other option would be the spawn on the misinformed belief that Konoha had two jinchuuriki, and the spawn was himself. Process of elimination and all that.

He flipped another page.

“Have you ever thought the current system is not the one which brings the best equilibrium?”

The current system had no equilibrium. Atomizing it was the way to go. Dust it would be, in a few months.

The man waited. Kurama kept his silence. There was only the rustle of paper.

Another page, and then Gumball’s pinspark signature was swerving back from where it’d been loitering in the poetry aisle. The man rose, silently. Good. He’d been in Gumball’s seat. “I see you are not interested at the moment,” he observed, which was the only intelligent thing he’d done so far. “Perhaps later then, Uzumaki Menma.”

Internally, Kurama rolled his eyes.

There was no later. Kurama’s interest in whatever plot the man had was in the negatives, and the village would be gone soon enough that a second meeting was unlikely, unless something truly drastic happened in the short interim between. The man’s chakra signature cut across the shelves just as Gumball poked her head into the reading cranny, the third edition of _Princess Kaguya_ Kurama had sent her to fetch tucked under one arm.

“Got it!” she whispered, beaming.

He put down his book. He’d told Gumball he’d help her through the vocabulary. Advancing her literary tastes was, in fact, part of his priorities.

 

* * *

 

The spawn’s birthday party was hosted on October eight, on the weekend just prior to the Hero's festival. Kurama hand-wrote the invitations with bright sparkly pen because according to Yamanaka that was a human birthday party tradition, and then shoved the cards at the spawn to distribute to his brat cohort. It was timed for dinner. The spawn bought an enormous amount of glitter and streamers and glittery streamers. Kurama sent Dog-brat to fetch the cupcakes.

He didn’t realize the logistical nightmare of having seven extra larval-staged humans crammed into their apartment until Yamanaka Inoichi showed up at four o’clock in the afternoon hustling about five people’s worth of extra food and half the invitees — Nara slung over one shoulder, Gumball, Yamanaka, Akimichi clambering at his feet — through the front door. Then yeah, there were logistical nightmares. Namely _not enough space_. Then Uchiha Mikoto came a bare five minutes later with Uchiha-brat, which was the first Kurama had seen a hair of her in a month, and then Aburame, and then Inuzuka, whose mother clapped Yamanaka Inoichi cheerfully on the shoulder before leaving through the balcony window.

Yamanaka Inoichi did not leave through the balcony window. Kurama eyed him. “... Are you staying?” Was this also normal human birthday party behavior?

“Daddy,” whirled Yamanaka, tone scandalized, which  translated to no: this was not normal human birthday party behavior.

“There has to be at least one supervising adult sweetie,” said Yamanaka Inoichi, Nara still asleep over his shoulder, trying to find room on the kitchen counter to put down the eight bento boxes he’d brought.

In the living room, something dropped.

“Oy!” cried Inuzuka. “Guys _please_ ,” said Akimichi. “Gimme all the presents!” crowed the spawn.

Gumball edged closer to Yamanaka senior, clutching her gift-wrapped rectangle a little closer. “Is there a present pile?” Yamanaka senior asked, finally setting down the bento stack on a cleared sliver of counter.

“This is _unnecessarily complicated,_ ” muttered Kurama, took Gumball’s package, and then stalked out to set it next to the couch. Yamanaka dropped the blue plastic bag she’d bought on top.

“Kiba, gimme,” complained the spawn, making grabby motions. Aburame glanced at them, crossed the living room, and set down a plain wooden box. The spawn lunged. A minor whirlwind of leaves and stray glitter cut through the balcony to set down a platter of beautiful, perfectly iced chocolate truffle cupcakes.

“Um,” said Gumball.

Dog-brat was not in ANBU uniform, but his secondary (or was that primary?) mask was still fixed on his face. He was also dressed more like a ninja than anyone else in the apartment, including Yamanaka senior, in dark pants and what looked like a mesh shirt under his button up. As always his hair was a disaster.

“Dog!” said the spawn, attention diverted. “Guys guys guys this is Dog.”

“Who what now?” asked Inuzuka.

“Dog!” repeated the spawn, just as  Dog-brat responded a lazy: “Supervisor,” and Kurama said: “ _pack-mule._ ”

Yamanaka senior stuck his head around the kitchen corner. “Ah Kakashi. Help me portion out the noodles.”

“Kaka— who?” asked the spawn.

“No one in this village can name _anything,_ ” muttered Kurama.

There was a long moment of hustling, but eventually Dog-brat extricated himself from the gaggle of children crowding at his feet. Yamanaka Senior ferried half a dozen bowls from the kitchen to the living room, corralled Inuzuka and the spawn into some semblance of behavior, and somehow managed to sit, squish and wedge eight tiny children around Kurama’s low multi-purpose study table. Parties hats were distributed. The presents were piled neatly away. Kurama blinked, and then he had a plate, a mug full of chilled cocoa, and a cupcake in front of him that had not been there a moment before, as did every other spawn.

Inuzuka reached for this cupcake. Uchiha brat elbowed him.

 _“Kiba_ ,” he hissed.

“What the poop?” yelped Inuzuka.

Yamanaka senior waved a sheaf of very sparkly paper. “So,” he said cheerfully, “ according to this itinerary— “ what itinerary? There was no itinerary — “now that everyone is here, we have dinner early, and then ninja tag outside.”

Yamanaka made a face at this succession of events. “Ninja-tag. _Daddy_.”

“Anyone that _want_ s to play ninja tag can go outside for ninja tag,” corrected Yamanaka senior. “The rest can watch a movie.”

“What if we want ninja tag _and_ the movie,” asked the spawn with intensity.

“Then you can come inside after the ninja tag,” assured Yamanaka senior. “We’ll put on multiple movies.”

This seemed to satisfiy the spawn, because he nodded firmly to himself and then reached out to snag his chocolate truffle cupcake, decorated liberally with blue sprinkles. Inuzuka reached out a hand as well and Uchiha-brat slapped it back. The spawn thrust his cupcake into the air.

“Rama!”

With significantly less explosive energy Kurama waved his cupcake. “Whoo.”

“To turning seven!” shouted the spawn with glee.

“Mmm.”

For one brief moment Kurama let his eyes fall shut. To turning seven. _To turning seven_. And this was the first birthday party the spawn had ever had, this was the last birthday party the spawn wiill ever have, seven years old with stars in his eyes like it was a dream come true. And it was. It was a dream come true, wasn’t it? A small child’s dream of ceremony and acknowledgement.  

Once upon a time he’d scrubbed the tears from his eyes, and told Kurama, mouth all twisted, _“it ain’t fair I’m the only one that’s — that’s never invited.”_

“To turning seven,” echoed Kurama, opening his eyes.

There was the click of a photo shutter.

Rising noise levels made it hard to pick out. Suprisingly, it was Dog-brat and not Yamanaka senior. He was holding a bulky polaroid camera, one that Kurama remembered to have been sitting lax on a textbook for half a year, because Dog-brat had a habit of collecting things and bestowing it upon Kurama’s apartment instead of wherever the heck he himself lived. The hand not supportng the camera was tucked neatly into a pocket, posture slouched and lazy.

The spawn seemed not to notice, although Gumball certainly did. She blinked just as there was another, muted _kk-chhk._

“ _Now_ can I have a cupcake?” said Inuzuka to Uchiha-brat.

“Everyone can have a cupcake!” shouted the spawn.

“Since this is a special occasion, having dessert first is acceptable,” allowed Aburame.

Akimichi picked two sprinkles off his frosting. “... Why wouldn’t you want dessert first?” he wondered. Excellent point.

Dessert was the best part of any meal, so Kurama had two cupcakes, and since he’d specifically ordered each to be about the size of a rice bowl that meant by the time cupcake number two was finished he was basically full. His stomach capacity to hold desert did not extend to other food groups. He nibbled at the  (admittedly excellent) sashimi Akimichi had brought. Apart from himself and Gumball though, the remaining kids were black holes — including Yamanaka, who only seemed to be eating less due to her superior table manners. Food went down gullets and occasionally smeared on a collar or a sleeve. Gumball, sitting wedged between Yamanaka and Kurama, folded up her remaining half a cupcake and slowly ate a bowl of pork on rice.

“Your food’s _too good,_ Chouji,” said the spawn after downing three plates of sushi.

The spawnlets cleared the dishes, which then disappeared, presumably into the sink or a sealng scroll up Yamanaka Senior’s sleeve. Then it was time to open the presents, according to the itinerary that still didn’t exist, no matter how enthusiastically Yamanaka senior deferred to his sparkly page.

Kurama didn’t pay exact attention to the spawn’s gifts — kunai set, two actual buckets of glitter, books, something ninjay part two, and then the spawn trying to tackle his hal fo the table to the ground saying, “you guys are the _bestest_ ”— but he pried open Gumball’s package for a tin of macaroons and found, surprisingly, T _he Complete Poetry Compilation of Nijiki Shinji i_ n Yamanaka’s plastic bag.

It was… something.

“Ahh,” he said, turning the book over.

“The correct response is _thankyou,_ ” said Yamanaka, even as Inuzuka pried the spawn off and said, exasperated. “Don’t cry, you dumbo, you’re _seven_ now _.”_

 _“Kiiiiba,”_ muffled the spawn.

Thank you, huh. Kurama put his hand over the raised lines of the titlular kanji. How long had it been? It made him want a laugh, a little, but mostly it made something inside him feel sharp and pale and still. He brushed his thumb over the front page, letting his hair hide his eyes, the straight unhappy slash of his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said.

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, they went outside to play ninja tag.

Yamanaka looked at Kurama as if he were crazy. She was magniously ignored. “You _hate_ exercise,” she said, squinting, mouth pursed,  and the spawn scowled and her and roped his arm around Kurama’s shoulders and did the pouting thing that never worked but the spawn kept trying anyways, because he was honestly as dumb as a box of rocks. Today being the spawn’s (first, last, only) big day however,  exercise or not Kurama put on his shoes and went outside with the rest of the brat cohort, most of whom were waddling and still half in a food coma. Gumball and Yamanaka linked arms and trailed him.

The road was dusty and the horizon was slowly beginning to redden, and the air had the chill of late fall. Kurama stayed on the sidelines as the brat cohort tumbled among themselves, sitting with his feet dangling from the stone steps of the apartment.

“We could be watching a movie right now,” Yamanaka said crossly to his left.

“It’s the principal of the thing.” Kurama slanted her a sideways glance. He didn’t understand why she was complaining. “You didn’t have to come, if you didn’t want to.”

Yamanaka scoffed.

“You didn’t have to come, he says. It’s the principal of he thing, he says.” She tucked Gumball’s scarf into her jacket with more force than strictly necessary. “Ooops, sorry Sakura. And you — It’s called _moral support_.” She said this like Kurama was supposed to be familiar with the social rules of small girls, which Kurama, even after a year in Yamanaka and Gumball’s company, was not.

“Well,” hedged Gumball.

She got no further than that though, because a ball of brown hair and half a puppy skidded, rolled, and the flopped to a halt next to them. The dog yipped. Shaking his head, Inuzuka leveraged himself back up by the elbows.

He looked at Yamanaka, looked at Gumball, and then quick as a snake tapped Kurama’s bicep with a howl of “You’re it!” and then ran for it.

Kurama looked at his arm. In the distance, Inuzuka was powering away. He eyed Yamanaka.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

Yeah, he didn't think so. "Fucking shit," he sighed,  walked the thirty meters towards a lamppost and smacked a hand against Dog-brat’s knee. “Tag.”

“Not very sportsmanly of you, ” said Dog-brat mildly.

Kurama raised a completely unimpressed eyebrow.

Developing an actual personality that did not fall into the category of “high-strung-mask-faced-twerp” seemed to have been Dog-brat’s personal project for the past half a year. It’d been a while coming — something of an accumulation over the years — Kurama supposed, except for the fact that Kurama had no idea where eighty percent of this strange, new personality Dog-brat was trying shrouding himself in came from. Granted Kurama had few recollections of Dog-brat prior to Uchiha fucking Madara seven years ago, but his recollections of Dog-brat the seven years after more than made up for that.

Dog brat was a bundle of raw nerves guarded by razer tripwire, fuelled with a combination of deep, deep regret and workaholic perfectionism. Over the years and a lot of pestering from the spawn those raw nerves  developed an epidermis, the razer tripwire untangled enough to let loose, on rare occasions, actual opinion instead of just a ruler straight rigidity or radiating judgement, while the deep, deep regret and workaholic perfectionism dissipated exactly nowhere. Thus was Dog-brat’s natural state of being. This new, slouching, careless Dog-brat who occasionally tried and failed to eye smile was like a costume that didn’t fit.

At least he didn’t test his new sense of humour (suprise, suprise, Dog-brat had one) on the spawn. That would either go straight over the spawn’s head or inspire a fit. He did try his new sense of humour on Kurama, which Kurama was not entirely pleased by but could ignore fine.

In the long run it didn’t matter. Dog-brat did all the tasks Dog-brat needed to do with the same efficiency and expertise as before. Like grocery shopping. And book shopping. And keeping the spawn occupied.

“If it has “sports” in it then I don’t care for it,” said Kurama, rolling his eyes, watching as the Dog-brat shrugged, made a _that’s fai_ r hand gesture, and then unslouched to go after the spawn.

“Dooooog,” he heard the spawn whine.

It was another twenty minutes before Kurama went inside, Yamanaka and Gumball trailing.

The temperature dropped quite rapidly after the sun went down, and his fingers were beginning to lose circulatoin. They put on a movie and flopped onto the couch, hot cocoa and a tin of cookies in hand. Kurama was halfway to drowsing when a blast of cold air and a sudden wall of noise announced the spawn and the brat cohort’s arrival indoors.

Immediately and suddenly, the couch became much more squished. Gumball jolted from where she’d dosed off against Yamanaka’s shoulder. The spawn wriggled his way into the space between Kurama’s left side and an armrest.

Someone put on another movie and then Inuzuka stole the remote and set the volume to maximum screaming.

“ _Fucking Sage,”_ Kurama swore, suddenly much more awake. Yamanaka senior gave him a repraochful look. Yamanaka junior smacked Inuzuka over the head. Inuzuka headbutted Yamanaka in turn, to an indignant squawk, and then settled in to watch the movie.

By the time the first parents came to pick up their spawn, night had touched down and wrapped around in some velvet blanket, intruded only by the muted crackle of the television. Kurama — and near everyone else — was asleep.

 

* * *

 

Dog-brat was not their supervisory for the Hero’s festival. Dog-brat, was not, in fact, in Konoha at all, come October tenth. Apparently he was on a (semi-delayed, courtesy of his attendance at the spawn’s birthday party) mission and wasn’t to be due back for another week and a half, minimum.

The spawn was still raring to go the festival, Dog or no Dog though, and after half an hour of wheedling the Monkey-man, glancing imploringly at the ceiling, waved his hand and capitulated with a half sigh of: “But be careful Naruto-chan.” Come the night of October tenth, two days after the spawn’s party, it was just the spawn and Kurama, down the streets gilded in lantern light.

The festival’s usual emotional connotations of extreme outrage were dimmed this year, because Kurama, once again, _could smash this village into the ground_ whenever he felt like. Kurama studiously ignored the parade for Namikaze ongoing, studiously ignored the play of Namikaze vs the Kyuubi being shown in the theatres, and could almost pretend this was just a nice, normal, festival. He focused on the almost maniac energy saturating the streets: the colourful banners, the lanterns, all the food and the stupid silly children’s games, and in those respects it was much akin to the human festivals of ages past Kurama had been guest of honour at.

(Technically, he was still guest of honour at this festival, just… in a different way.)

The spawn found Inuzuka at a ring-toss stall, and Kurama left the two of them to that while he went sampling cotton-candy. The spawn was going to be stuck in the gaming stalls for the foreseeable future and Kurama had food to eat.

He went through a boat of takoyaki and, feeling whimsically amused, got himself a truly ridiculous okame festival mask. It was a little too big for him but he could still see out of the narrow eye slits. He went yoyo-scooping, and then goldfish scooping, and then bought himself a giant glass bottle of some frothy strawberry drink that was delightfully sweet. _Strawberry Nigore Sake_ , the label read. Kurama was already imagining the substitutions he could make in his cake recipes.

When a flare in the distance indicated the start of the fireworks, Kurama went to find the spawn.

Even with the village crammed into a single district, the spawn’s chakra signature was impossible to miss. Kurama heaved his giant, heavy sake bottle and beelined  towards the spawn’s bright fire-wind burn. Somewhere overhead fireworks were sounding in the sky, blue, and green, and red.

Apparently the spawn had migrated next to the theatre. Neon colours. Muted music. Kurama found his chakra along with Inuzuka’s. It was not the front of the theatre those two had decided to cloister themselves in, for whatever reason, and there was an odd smell to the air. Only one or two lanturns hung from the sloping roof. Light illuminated the edges of faded movie posters.

Kurama turned a corner, felt another, foreign signature enter vicinity, and then there was a thunk and a splash and the spawn yelping high and short, chakra jolting _fear-surprise._

“— What are you — _Hana_!” yowled Inuzuka.

A completely different voice was  saying: “You fucking — you fucking demon _get out go away why are you here._ ” The foreign signature rippled: anger, fury, grief.

Kurama skidded round the second corner and found himself blank.

The spawn was on the ground. His eyes were huge and round, mouth open in surprise, cheek and collar blistering red and peeling skin. A lanturn spilt oil into the night air. A white little dog barking. Inuzuka— his teeth latched around a teen’s ankle.  The teen had a konoha headband on one bicep, dressed in festival clothes otherwise, shaking hands and glazed, furious eyes and speech that was half slur half snarl.

Light refracted off something in his hand. Glass.

“ _Get the fuck out of this village you — “_

Inuzuka growled. The spawn’s gaze skipped from the teen, to behind him, locked onto Kurama. His eyes went even wider, if that was possible. “Ra— “

Inuzuka Hana clobbered the dimwit teenager over the head with Kurama’s suddenly missing bottle of strawberry sake and he crumpled, boneless.

“Sis!”

“I leave you two alone for ten fucking minutes,” said Inuzuka Hana. “What the heck? Who the heck is this?” She toed the limp body, and then wrinkled her nose. “And how drunk _was_ he? Ew.”

“Sis,” hissed Inuzuka, clambering up, “Naruto’s —”

Kurama didn’t know when he moved. He didn’t know how he moved. He was just there, suddenly, in the moment between one blink and the next, crouching by the spawn’s side.

He couldn’t _think._

It wasn’t until the spawn went: “Rama — _ow_ ,” did Kurama realized he was digging nails into the spawn’s arm, feeling his breath come out in short a short, furious hiss. He unclenched his hands. The spawn’s face was pale and drawn and he wasn’t supposed to look like that. Kurama did not want him looking like that. There were barely six months left and the spawn was supposed to be happy for every single one of those days, because Kurama owed that to him, because Kurama loved him, maybe, probably.

No one was allowed to make him look like that.

A hand touched down on his shoulder. Kurama bared his teeth and hissed.

“Don’t fucking give me that,” said Inuzuka Hana, “I know basic medical ninjutsu and I’m guessing you don’t, so move and let me — huh.”

The ugly blisters were already healing over, red and white boils disappearing to healthy pink skin. That was perfectly fine and perfectly anticipated, but the spawn was still chalky white and looking at the crumpled dimwit on the ground with something like uncertain fear, chakra small and hesitant. The spawn wasn’t supposed to look like that.

A flicker of movement at the corner of his eye. Inuzuka slipped past his senior, dog at his heels, to demand. “You ain’t hurt bad right? Who the heck does that? What _was_ that?”

“A fucking drunk,” said Inuzuka Hana.

“Yeah I can _smell_. I mean what he was — “

“A fucking drunk,” she repeated, terse and short, and Inuzuka looked at her, big eyed and startled. She sighed. “It’s — he’s already healed. I’ll report it, don’t worry about it. Or let the higher ups worry about it, in any case.” She rubbed at her forehead, and then went to address Kurama and the spawn. “You two — you wanna go home?”

The spawn was still staring at the dimwit on the ground. “I… uh.”

“We’re going,” said Kurama, hooked an arm under the spawn’s elbow, and dragged his deadweight up.

 

* * *

 

The shock wore off in increments, like flaking paint. By the time they completed the silent walk to the apartment all the spawn’s colour had returned and he was walking just fine by himself, which was good, since it was a trial for Kurama to heave him anywhere. Kurama closed the apartment door to the sight of Inuzuka’s unsure loitering outside. A moment later, chakra sense showed him Senior dragging Inuzuka away by the collar.

The spawn flopped onto the couch.

Technically this was Kurama’s fault. Technically this was Namikaze’s fault, for fucking sealing Kurama into a three hour old brat. Technically it was Kurama’s fault again for just not killing everything and everyone that day because now he was dealing with consequences. Kurama went to the kitchen, set on the kettle, and lined up three bowls of instant ramen onto the counter.

It was probably Uchiha Madara’s fault. Senju Hashirama’s. The next time he met Ashura and Indra Kurama was going to _bite their heads off._

Father would forgive him.

The kettle whistled. The spawn said: “Rama.”

Kurama’s hand paused on curve of a ramen cup.

“Yes?”

There was the shift of fabric, the soft _whump_ of a face hitting a couch cushion. The spawn said: “So that’s why the Old Man keeps and keeps on telling us we need like, Dog.” He paused. “Or something.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Mmm.”

The spawn made a strangled sound. “That was dumb.”

Kurama, balancing a ramen cup and wooden chopsticks, made the ten steps into the living room, asked, “How the hell did you end up alone in a _dark alley anyway_?”

He was blankly, blankly furious and he should not have been. He was blankly, blankly furious and he had every right to be. It wasn’t as if these circumstances were _unforeseen ones._  Dog-brat lurking like a polite shadow no matter where they went usually deterred these kind of scenarios, helped along by the fact that Kurama was not an idiot, and the absence of both meant the spawn’s opportunities of digging himself into trouble-land spiked drastically. Between lack of the former and the latter it was almost expected that something would happen to the spawn today. And In the grand scheme of events that injury was comparable to a papercut, one moment of fear and uncertainty. The spawn was already better and Kurama should not have been so angry.

Except it was supposed to be a good day for the spawn. It was supposed to be a good day for Kurama, this year. There were only six months left and there should have been no moments of fear and uncertainty. Kurama should not have cared but this was his due: Kurama hated him and Kurama loved him and he was Kurama’s responsibility. Kurama hated him but he was the only one here _allowed to_. The villagers should have loved the damned idiot for the same reasons Kurama could not. He was Namikaze’s legacy and Kushina’s treasure and he had Kurama’s freedom strung around his neck, had Konohagakure’s safety strung on that same chain. Even if they did not love him this village owed him. They owed him everything. So yes, Kurama had the right to be angry.

Maybe this was Karma too, Namikaze and Kushina’s. The bastard village they tried to save would end up shunning their one and only son.

The spawn accepted the ramen with despondent sullenness, and said: “I wasn’t _alone_. Kiba was there. And there was a drinks guy that wouldn’t sell me tea, so we were trying to prank him.”

Kurama’s hand twitched.

“Are you a fucking — no of course you are. Don’t answer that.”

“How’s it _my_ fault?” said the spawn, scowling down.

Kurama rubbed at his temple. 

“It wasn't." he snapped. "It’s just — “

“The fox,” said the spawn, which -- that wasn’t _wrong,_ but it made Kurama want to reflexively throw something at him anyway.

He counted down from five. “Yes.”

“People are dumb.”

“Yes.”

The spawn slurped up the last dregs of his third ramen cup, and then looked down as if it were a surprise that he had, in fact, finished three cups in three minutes. “I’ll make more,” said Kurama, rising.

There was a knock on the door just as he was ripping the plastic lids off the third ramen container. Familliar chakra stood outside, a banked simmer. 

The lock turned, hinges rattled, and then the first thing the spawn said was: "Old man!" followed by, “Old man I was _super duper_ careful it ain’t— wasn’t my _fault!_ ”

“You weren’t careful,” said Kurama.

“Traitor!”

“I’m not — ” came the Monkey-man’s voice. “Naruto. Naruto, are you alright?”

“I want Ichiraku ramen," said the spawn.

Kurama slammed another three newly cooked ramen cups to the living room table. “finish these first.”

They converged around the table, the three of them, where the spawn proceeded to demolish the new noodle batch with the same speed as he did their predecessors. “Hana-kun and Kiba-kun briefed me of the situation,” said the Monkey-man. “Sanazawa Takeshi will be punished adequately, Naruto.” He drew in a breath, and he felt, tired, tired, but Kurama had zero sympathy — this was a making of his generation’s folly. “It will not happen again.”

“Mmm,” said the spawn, slurping broth.

“Naruto,” said the Monkey-man. “This —”

“He was drunk,” interrupted the spawn, and made a face despite his stuffed cheeks. “I _know.”_

The Monkey-man hesitated. The spawn chewed curiously and swallowed.

In the end though, the Kyuubi was still apparently a subject no one was going to breach. “Yes he was, and it was absolutely inappropriate. As was the vendor’s attitude that sparked the entire chain of events. I will be talking to the market association.”

“... Those assholes?”

“Those assholes,” the Monkey-man confirmed, and then, with a touch of dry humour. “They would be less so if you stopped pranking them, Naruto-kun.”

Pouting, the spawn said: “I’ll stop pranking them when they stop _being_ assholes.”

“And thus we have a catch 22.”

The spawn wrinkled his nose. He set aside his third — technically sixth — finished ramen bowl and then for a lack of anything else to eat chewed on the wood of his chopsticks. “Old man, this —“

“It’ll get better,” said the Monkey-man.

Kurama just barely snorted.

The spawn looked up, blinked, and then his expression made a turn for the “don’t state the obvious, duh.” “I _know_ ,” he said. “That ain’t it. It was me this time, and the guy was drunk and dumb, but Rama heals at the speed of _slugs_ and he already gets sick like three times a year and —”

“I won’t be getting into such a situation in the _first place_ ,” snapped Kurama.

“The circumstances were… aligned,” said the Monkey-man. “It shouldn’t have happened and will not happen again.” The looked at the spawn, to Kurama, and then back, and Kurama knew what he saw in the echo of their faces. “The village. It needs… time. Give them time, Naruto, Menma. It’ll turn out alright.”

The spawn made a completely agravated sound, and jabbed his chopsticks in the Monkey-man’s direction.

“I know,” he repeated. “I know _that_. I’m gonna train hard and grow up to the best and strongest ninja and then Hokage and no one will be dumb and drunk and everyone will respect me, everyone will look at me _for_ me and the dumb street vendors will sell me all the food I ever want and — and give me _free food_ on top— and  then I’ll protect them, because I’m Hokage, and beat up bad guys and help princesses.” He nodded decisively to himself. “Yeah.”

“Will you be factoring paper-work time into your princess-saving?” The Monkey-man inquired.

“Paper- _blah_.”

It felt relieved, the Monkey-man’s chakra. And also dimly, wornly sad.  “Well, it’s good to see you’re optimistic. I must go — I have a meeting.  I will do what I can about the ramen you want though. I don’t think Teuchi will mind making you a bowl despite tomorrow being his day off.”

The spawn brightened. “You will? _Awesome._ ”

 

* * *

 

“It won’t get better,” said Kurama.

The Monkey-man’s chakra appeared and disappeared to the other side of the village; Kurama tracked the shunshin behind closed eyes.

“Rama—”

He didn’t know why he was saying this. It would not matter in the long run — the spawn didn’t _have_ a long run. 

“It won’t get better. It doesn’t matter what you do. It won’t get better.”

“It will,” said the spawn, with absolute, conviction, and Kurama could have laughed. This stupid, silly, boy. The only thing humans knew how to do was kill. They killed what they did not understand; they killed what they did. They kept trying to remake the world in their own, wrong, broken mirror of a perception. It was the fear in them. It was their tiny, firefly lifespans. It was Asura and Indra’s legacy. “It’s gonna — It’s like the old man said. It’ll just take time for the fox to wear off. Like a bad smell, or Saki-sensei’s bad cologne.“

Like a bad cologne. Now Kurama did laugh, short and sharp. He opened his eyes and the spawn was looking at him, and Kurama didn’t want the spawn to look like that. Kurama was making the spawn look like that: big eyed and uncertain chakra despite the resolute set of his mouth.

“They won’t care.”

“I’ll make them _care_. Rama. Rama we just haveta make’em see.” And he reaching across the table, earnest, his damned father’s eyes and his damned father’s hair and the curve of his mother’s cheek, and no one saw it.

All he felt was sharp and pale and cold. All he felt was hot and burning and furious. “They’ll _neve_ r see.”

Senju Hashirama, taking him and his siblings to be caught and parcelled and bartered. Uzumaki Mito and thirty years drowning in the watery temple of her landscape. He’d begged Uzumaki Kushina, asked her: _“Listen, listen, by the grave of your ancestors child.”_ And she’d thrown that back at him. _“The world cannot be safe with you in it.”_  Like that was not of the highest hypocracy, with her village and her people and the blood that dogged their footsteps. They never saw. They never ever even tried to see.

“The Old Man said —“

“And who do you think put you in this situation in the first place?” said Kurama, lowly.

“It ain’t —”

“He told everyone else about the fox _but_ you. You weren’t supposed to know. You were never supposed to know.” Kurama looked at him, and then smiled. It was not a nice smile. “What do you think being a ninja means, you idiot? Do you think it’s glory and princesses and cool jutsu? There’s nothing of glory in being _shinobi_. They will take the core of you and replace it with poison. Being shinobi means to _kill_ , _that’s all nin-culture has ever known—_ ”

“I’ll change it. Rama Rama. when I’m Hokage I’ll  —”

He said this as if that title were not bestowed upon the greatest of the killers. Anyone that said _Kurama_ had a body count had evidently never seen Namikaze’s career record. He said this as if it were an honour, as if Hokage was a position of merit, of worth.

Kurama laughed.

“-- Make _everything_ better and and you can do — the laws and whatchamacallit — and they’ll love us, and no one’s killing anything because that’s dumb and rude and wrong. We’re gonna protect people and save people, like _all_ the T.V. shows, kickass twins for the win, and you’re my brother so —”

“I’m not your brother,” said Kurama, and the spawn flinched back as if struck.

His father Sage had eleven children. Ootsutsuki Kurama had eight siblings. Uzumaki Naruto was not amongst that number.

Kurama hated him, this idiot spawn, this stupid child, Kushina's boy. Maybe Kurama loved him. And it was a mercy, that Kurama was going to kill him, and it was a damn tragedy, that Kurama was going to kill him, because for the spawn to die meant that he’d never know life in its entirety, not its beauty and not its poison. Kurama would keep him in the snapshot of these moments, seven years old going backwards, trapped like leaf in amber, as a boy who did not have blood on his hands or war in his eyes, jutsu fire singing destruction under his skin. He would not become Hokage. That was a mercy. He would never rescue princesses or know the joy of growing up. That was a tragedy.

Uzumaki Naruto was seven years old and he loved ramen and glitter and he wanted to be Hokage. Uzumaki Naruto was an only child. Kurama was not his brother.

Uzumaki Naruto was Leaf-born and Leaf-bred, his father’s eyes and hair, his mother’s countenance. Sometimes in the dark midnight hours when he was asleep Kurama thought: _he doesn’t have to die_. Kurama was going to have to rip him apart for his Yang but this was what humans had forgotten: the Tailed beasts always gave back; Kurama could heal as easily as he destroyed. The spawn was Uzumaki, he would heal. The spawn was Uzumaki, and that was the problem. He was Leaf born and Leaf bred and he had Asura and Indra’s curse on his shoulders. He wanted to be Hokage.

It was a mercy.

“Rama — “ he said, small and broken, and Kurama turned, rose to his feet. Kurama had a duty to the spawn but right now he could not bear to look at him.

He stepped towards the hallway and all of the sudden the spawn was scrambling after him, then against the closed and locked door of the bedroom. His voice was a shout, breaking. “Rama! RAMA YOU _DUMBO_ RAMA YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY THAT. YOU AIN’T. You — _You ain’t ever allowed to say that!_ You’re my brother you’re my twin you’re not allowed _— ”_

There was a crack, a thunk, and then the door smacked against the wall, doorknob hanging in a very broken fashion. The spawn stood in the doorway, wild-eyed and scared lipped, pale and tremblig.

“Rama you _dimdim,”_ he cried, and then — all of a sudden quiet. “Rama. You’re crying.”

Was he now.

He reached a hand up and brushed his cheek. Felt the water there, a smear of wet. He hadn’t realized. It was such a human reaction. Tailed Beasts did not have tear ducts.

“Hey,” he took a step forward, careful. “Hey, it ain’t. It’s gonna all be good and fine and great. Rama don’t _cry.”_ Another step, until they were shoulder to shoulder, and then the spawn hugged him, carefully. “It’ll be fine and — and. Even if _no on_ e else cares I’ll care. So there. Cuz we're brothers and I’m _older._ ”

But Kurama had eight siblings, and the spawn was not one of them.

* * *

 

In the morning, in the early hours when the sun was just beginning to rise, Kurama pulled down a book from his shelves. There was no wear at its edges despite it being one of the oldest in his collection. The pages were thick, and glossy, and apart from a splash of orange juice along an edge also pristine.

The motion caused a stir. At his side the spawn’s weight uncurled.

"Mrrrgh?"

Kurama laid it out, the book of landscapes Dog-brat had gotten them so long ago. The spawn hooked his chin over Kurama's shoulder to peer past as he flipped through. Specific pages lingered, the book falling open a little easier in the places Kurama tended to frequent. A sunset rose above a northern land of ice, where a ribbon of lavender cut through black and white banded mountains. There were rice fields caught from some aerial vantage point;  the terraced, sectioned paddies looked like slices of stained glass. The last page was yet another sunset: red sun over a red dessert, and in the distance of the rolling hills silhouettes of nomads on their camels.

Kurama traced the edge of the sun with his finger.  

"Hey, you have a favourite?"

For a moment the spawn only blinked stupidly, which he supposed was due. Kurama rarely asked the spawn for such opinions. "Uh, no? They're nice. They're all nice! I liked the desert ones. And the ocean ones. But the orange canyon ones are nice too. They're like our mountain, but _bigger._ "

The photo the spawn talked of showed a massive winding structure of banded quartz, pinkish and orange, that walled in a deep green river. Kurama read the caption: Eastern Rock, _Dogarasu_ town.

"Nevermind. Forget it."

"huh?"

"Nothing but a ridiculous fancy."

He'd wanted, briefly, for the spawn to see _more_ before he died. The most beautiful the land could offer. Not just this village, trapped behind Hashirama's mokuton walls.

But they weren't going to Rock. Rock was three hundred miles south of where Kurama needed to go. They weren't touching the oceans either. It'd been so long since even Kurama had last seen them, but the closest he would get was River before hitting Wind. And Wind was the end goal, Wind had always been the end goal. He'd been cross-referencing a dozen maps and the routes of more than a few dozen traders for this exact reason.

Cart, as little time on foot as possible, then the train. Make it far enough and there would be no one and nothing, nothing but sand and air and sky; there would certainly be no one to stop him.

And Kurama would be finally, _finally_ free.

"What about you?" asked the spawn. "Any favourites?"

There were plains in Fire Country's south that smelled of summer and knew the song of Kurama's chakra.

Kurama closed the book.  Against his cheek, the spawn's hair tickled.

"No," said Kurama, and looked at him, blue eyed and blonde haired, "nothing here."

 

* * *

 

They would be leaving in March.

Dog-brat would be gone then, throwing himself into ANBU, spirited away by old grief; the traders would come into Konohagakure and leave it by the hundreds;  monsoon rain would cover Kurama’s tracks. By then Kurama would have finished his chakra-dampeners, and the spawn his Kage-bunshin. It was in six months. He would give Gumball her birthday present before hand.

It was fall now, just at the cusp of winter. When spring came again Kurama would be gone, and this village would be ash.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're an interlude away from the end of Part I! Next chapter: Truths about Uzumaki Naruto. To everyone's who's stuck with me and read 79k of slice-of-life fic centered around Kurama's emotional ups and downs and no clear plot line, thank you so much -- you guys are amazing and awesome and the absolute best.


	18. Interlude: Naruto

 

_\- People, Meetings, the Art of Falling in Love Going Backwards -_

 

* * *

 

_On Ramen_

 

* * *

 

 

 

The first time he tastes Ichiraku’s ramen Naruto is three years old. (The first time he tastes Ichiraku ramen Naruto is one exactly, October tenth on the stroke of midnight, but he does not remember this). There is a man and a girl behind a heavy wooden stall. The Old Man says: He is Uncle Teuchi. He says: She is Ayame-nee-chan. He is tall and weathered and looks kinda like the Old Man Hokage. She is small and wearing a white shirt, dark hair in plaits. Naruto has never had an Uncle or an older sister before.

The air smells of garlic oil.

They smile at him and Rama. Their eyes crinkle. No one else’s eyes do that.  

“First time customers?” says Uncle Teuchi.

And then he pulls out three bowls of the most delicious ramen ever for Naruto to eat. It’s the bestest. The broth is hot and perfect, the pork is tender and perfect, even the brussel sprouts are crunchy-salty instead of mushy and dumb. It feels like a punch in his mouth, starburst colour. Naruto finishes the three bowls and then steals Rama’s, because Rama only ever finishes half his food.

Uncle Teuchi and Ayame-nee-chan smile at him with their mouths _and t_ heir eyes all the way through Naruto eating ramen. They smile with their mouths and their eyes everytime he comes back, again and again, dragging Rama with him. “How was your day?” asks Uncle Teuchi, everytime. “Did you do anything cool?” asks Ayame-nee-chan, everytime. The ramen is extra, extra good, even better than normal ramen, _loads_ better than normal ramen. Every bite is a burst: starburst colour. It makes him feel warm and tingly in his stomach, which is a feeling he wants to keep forever. He eats more ramen trying to make it stay. He wonders if there’s a secret ingredient.

Ayame-nee-chan tells him, “yeah, papa always says so,” and then, whispering, “we put love in it, yanno?”

“Love?” parrots Naruto, and looks at her, and looks sideways at Rama. He looks back to his bowl of ramen, pork ribs, still steaming.

He hadn’t known love could be put in ramen. The Old Man says things about putting love in people, but not ramen. Is this what love is supposed to be like, he wonders: a punch in his mouth, starburst colour? Tingles like cold soda fizzing in his stomach? He’s never eaten love before but this makes so much sense. It’s so great. Even Rama smiles sometimes when he’s eating Ramen-dango.

Ramen is love condensed to noodles and broth and a lacquer bowl. Of course this is why Ramen is always so good — Naruto has been eating love all along — Uncle Teuchi’s in Ichiraku and other people’s love in instant ramen, which isn’t as tasty as Uncle Teuchi’s but still good.

“Wow,” he says.

It’s a super duper secret. Love is in ramen, ramen is love. Ramen is love _packaged._ And obviously, when he eats the ramen, the love can sit all nice in his stomach.

“Wow,” he says, louder, starry-eyed looking down. And this is — a firework, an inspiration, punch-and-pop colour, a whoosh in his head.

 

* * *

 

For two weeks afterwards Naruto ditches his plans for Hokage for plans to become a bowl of ramen instead. Ramen is love packaged and given out and _accepted_ and he has lots and lots of love to package. He doesn’t really get what  love is, exactly (it’s tingly feelings and crinkling eyes and wide wide smiles) but he knows — _he knows_ — that if he loves someone and they love him back than they won’t look at him funny.

It means to care.

The Old Man Hokage tells him it’s impossible to metamorphosis into a bowl of Ramen. Naruto is not deterred. Rama tells him it is physically impossible, and also _blahblah_ conservation of mass _blahblah_ chakra distribution _blah._ Naruto sulks for an hour, then switches gears and decides to be Uncle Teuchi’s (ramen making!) apprentice, only for Uncle Teuchi to tell him the apprenticeship age is fourteen and old as _balls._

Fine. He’ll go and be Hokage first. He’ll be a double threat, a _Ramen-making Hokage._

(This is what it is: a firework, an inspiration, punch-pop colour. Give and take.

Sometimes though, it is less give, less take, and more the freefall from the edge of a cliff. Two steps forward and he is tumbling cartwheels in the air, feeling the wind in his hair, scraping  knees and banging elbows on the way down.

This is how it happens. This is how it always happens.)

 

* * *

 

_On Falling_

 

* * *

 

 

He is two months to six and the boy with the puppy down his shirt just called him a “burnt smelling weirdo.” The first thing Naruto ever does to Inuzuka Kiba is punch him in the face. He clips Kiba's jaw, knocks him into the grass. The puppy down his shirt flops out and tumbles away. Two seconds later Kiba bounces back up to headbutt Naruto into a tree.

Kiba gives him a split lip and a runny nose and a new hole in his T-shirt. Naruto gives Kiba two blackeyes and a shiny dark bruise on his shin. "Hey," he says, when they're both panting under the midday heat, too tired to even yank hair. He grins big and wide, with teeth and dark bright eyes, "I'm Kiba, weirdo. Let's do that again."

He raises his fist. Naruto stares at him, at the grass stained knuckles. And then he grins a little bloodily and says, "Yeah!"

They fist bump.

It's like a firework, an inspiration, punch pop colour.  

Falling.

* * *

 

He is five years old the first time Uchiha Mikoto takes his hand. It is summer in the _loudloudloud_ drone of the marketplace and she is the prettiest person Naruto has ever seen. Her yutaka is dark blue and her hair is long and straight and black over one shoulder, and she is saying: “it’s very nice to meet you Naruto-kun,” to him, to _him,_ and he can’t stop looking at her. She is saying _it’s very nice to meet you_ while she smiles. Her cheeks dimple when she smiles. Her eyes are dark and pretty like  river stones.

She takes his hand.

She does it like it’s normal, casual. She slides his hand into hers and it’s warm;it’s not a soft hand, but it’s warm.

That’s all that matters.

He barely notices when she tugs him through the market, along with Itachi-san and Rama and Duck-butt. He’s too busy wiggling his fingers and trying to see if this is real — if this hand is real — and it is, _it is_ , and she is saying to him — to Duck-butt and Itachi-san and Rama — but she mainly him,“You were going to Ichiraku’s, boys?” She has eyes like river stones and a dimpling smile, and Naruto looks at her and it’s a punch-pop colour in his chest, some huge and bursting awe that trembles, a firework roar that drowns out all else because he’s falling right now, in this fragment of a moment, down down down.

 

* * *

 

He is five years old and it is summer, and Duck-butt has stupid hair and a mean right hook and eyes that don’t look away not once, but Itachi-san, Itachi-san gives him ice cream and _pays_ for it. He is eating chocolate and and vanilla cream that melts cool on his tongue, sprinkles that crunch between his teeth, and it is like ramen, just so, soda in his blood and butterflies in his stomach, _lovelovelove_ between his teeth, a realisation that punts him gently, sideways in the ribs, and he looks up to Duck-butt with oreo on his cheek and milk on his chin, Itachi-san smiling, a so-quiet-smile, and brothers come in packages, after all.

 

* * *

 

Dog comes, Dog leaves, Dog is more than just one meeting.

None of the other kids have a Dog like he does. He is four years old and just entering the Academy for the first time when he realizes, that Dog is special, that Dog is not a constant for people who are not Rama or Naruto. None of the other kids have a sort-of person with a red white mask instead of a face, dressed in black and silver, who picks them up from the Academy and gives him toys plucked from thin air, who smells of lacquer and rusty nails.

“Are you a spirit,” he asks. He is four years old and they just did folklore tales in class. “or a — a _fairy godmother_?”  He pats small  hands frantically over the red stripes on Dog’s face, looking into the ringed eye holes for signs of magic and fairy-ness.

“No,” says Dog, after a long pause. “A ghost maybe. Or a memory.”

 

* * *

 

Maybe that is why Dog has to leave: because he is a ghost and ghosts can’t stay long. He is four years old and it is February and Dog is gone, Dog always goes away but _he’ll come back he’ll come back_ he has to come back, four years old and watching the snow melt to slush outside and knowing —feeling punch pop realization spike queasy in his stomach — that it’s been weeks and weeks, that when Dog goes away in spring he goes away for a long long time, for an entire turn of the seasons.

He is three years old and Dog comes back. It is April and Naruto shrieks joy, hurtles himself across the room, demands: “up up up!” They are still in the orphanage where the other kids don’t like him, where they won’t touch him but Dog will, just like Rama does. Candies and chocolates flit from Dog’s pockets. Naruto climbs him like a tree and yanks on his silvery hair, tries to grab yellow tinfoil that flutter from his fingers in new and interesting shapes,  and he is laughing, laughing, like a firework, like an inspiration, starburst bright in his chest.

And he is three years old and it is March when Dog goes away. And he is two years old and it is June and Dog is back. And he is eight months old the first time Dog leaves, and he does not remember this. He does not remember being eight months old and being gripped by a feeling unknowing, unfathomable, reaching up with tiny child fingers to brush the ceramic of Dog’s mask, being held and hushed in the crook of Dog’s neck, gurgling _Inu Inu._

(Those are the first words he ever says.)

 

* * *

 

Every other Sunday they go to the Old Man Hokage’s office (every other Sunday before they are old enough to walk the Old Man visits the back orphanage rooms where they sleep) eating things made of sugar and flour and sweet teas, the sunlight slanting in, and he is three years old the first time he thinks to ask, cuz he really doesn’t know, “hey Old Man what d’you do anyway?”

“I am Hokage,” the Old Man says, puffing smoke and doing paperwork.

He doesn’t know what that word means yet. He is three years old and there is everything interchangeable ‘bout them, the Old Man and the Hokage, the closest thing to a gramps Naruto will ever have. Three years old, this is what being Hokage means: lots of papers and the Old Man’s big dumb hat, and sugar, and sunlight slanting through windows on Sundays. He does not know of the grandeur or the respect, just this quietus, Sunday mornings away from the orphanage eating cake, and it is enough, it is the first fireworks, unfurling, thinking: _I wanna be that too._

 

* * *

 

He does not have many things. He two-and-a-half-years-old and he knows this. He doesn’t have parents, and amongst the list of things he doesn’t have that’s one of the most important. He knows this. No one in the orphanage has parents though, so by itself that ain’t nothing special. But the other kids have — reminders, sometimes. Usually. Like a memory, or a trinket, or a will, or a _name._ He doesn’t have any of those things. This is why no matter how many times the Old Man tells him otherwise, he still wonders if he wasn’t dropped off by a stork in front of the Old Man’s doorstep.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need parents. Sometimes he wants them _so bad so bad so bad_ looking at the families in the villages streets it makes his teeth ache, but he knows from all the fairy tales that parents aren’t necessary, hearts are. All it means is that he has to work a little harder to get what others are given, that he has to dive free fall and catch with scraped palms what others are usually gifted. To hold _tight tight tight_ ,  that awe, that trembling in his chest.

He is two-and-a-half years old and he knows this: he does not have very much but he does have something the other kids do not, something he was gifted, for him alone and only him.

His brother’s name is _Kurama._

 

* * *

 

“And Sasuke said he loves Auntie best, but maybe only after Itachi, and I said okay that’s fine cuz I’ll love Auntie best if he doesn’t —”  

“You mean _like,_ ” Rama snaps, an interruption, right over Naruto’s words. “Not love. Love is —” he pauses, goes quiet, makes a noise. “Your fence-post bonding doesn't count.”

 _“I know what love is,”_ Naruto says, puffing his cheeks.

Love is important, and Naruto knows _all_ the important things. Rama is the one that’s dumb, over ramen and Auntie Mikoto and love, even when he’s supposed to be the smarter one. Dog says that Rama is particular and capricious, is all, which are both words Naruto don’t understand.

He doesn’t mean _like_. He knows what like is. That's the point. _Love_ is not _like_ because love is stronger than like.

Liking something means it can be taken, he knows. That it can be snatched, that one day it might leave and never come back. Love is the important emotion, the most important word. It is immortal: all the books say so. It doesn't matter if there's a dragon or a witch or a thousand years inbetween; it will never break; it will never scratch, it means _'til death do us apart,_ or whatever other vow adults like to use. Why should he like something when he can love it? Love means he will never ever have to let it go. It is something he catches in freefall off that cliff,  a thumping heart between his fingers, and it is a firework, an inspiration, a new punch-pop colour in his world.

It means: _You and me we have a bond okay? You can't leave. I won’t allow you to leave because you’re mine now, because I love you and you have to love me. I'll follow you to witches and dragons and the end of the world, you and me._

He knows what it is. He knows how it goes: the fall, the punch-pop colour in his world. He is six years old under the lid of a blue sky where Kiba is laughing and it's a breath knocked out of his lungs; he is five years old the first Uchiha Mikoto takes his hand, five years old and summer like an inspiration, Duck-butt rolling his eyes and Itachi-san saying, “whatever flavour you want, Naruto-kun,” in an ice-cream parlour smelling of milk and sugar. He is four years old and Dog is lifting him up, letting Naruto sit on his shoulders and yank at his hair, shrieking delight; he is three years old in the Old Man’s Hokage’s office, sunlight shafting through the windows, he is —

 

* * *

 

— He is seven years old. The lights are bright and there’s glitter in his hair, and he and Rama are toasting cupcakes at their birthday party. Soda pop is fizzling in his stomach, bubbles rising up, and he is so giddy he is gonna burst with it, punch-pop bright, fireworks rising, popping, falling —

And he is —

He is six years old and Rama’s teachin’ him another jutsu, chakra turning like this and this and this, following the hand signs he learned earlier in the Academy textbooks. It’s so cool. Rama knows all the best things. Rama knows _everything._ He says, leaning over Rama’s shoulder, “show that again. Again!” stars in his eyes wheeling —

And he is

Five years old and scared down to his tummy cause Rama’s gone quiet, Rama’s gone still, Rama ain’t swearing at him or swearing at anyone,  like someone’s replaced him with one those creepy wind-up dolls. Naruto hasN’t been this scared since ever, since that last time Rama got hospital-sick, when they kept him in a big white room for two whole days where Naruto wasn’t allowed in, and this is punch-burst colour too, in sickly shades, brown and bruise blue and black, this is going free-fall and breaking bones on the way down and down and —

Four years old and fifteen minutes into a pester when Rama finally smacks his book against his knee and swears with all the bad words that makes Naruto laugh. “Oh fine, just shut up,” he says, with narrow eyes. “I’ll read you a bedtime story, but you have to _be quiet."_

Victory! Naruto grins, pleased. He presses himself to Rama’s side, close enough to feel the bony-sharp angle of Rama’s shoulder, see the freckles on Rama’s cheeks and nose, like punch-out stars. His hair is a raspberry curtain over his eyes, frown ticking down again, fingers weird-snow cold even though it’s forty degrees outside and boiling. Here is a snapshot: a moment set in stone, permanence. He takes out Naruto's favourite book and lets him tap out the words on the page, hiragana, kanji.

And he is—

Three years old and punching out the kid who just called Rama a weirdo cuz he’s the only one who gets to. No one gets to call Naruto’s lil' brother a weirdo but him. The old Man never says he’s the older twin but he knows anyways. Naruto is bigger and stronger, faster and can yell louder. Rama’s his lil' bro who scowls to much and swears too much and reads too much and is the reason why it’s okay that sometimes Naruto doesn’t have parents, even if it's not right, even if he wants  them so bad so bad —

And he is —

He is two years old and Dog is gone Dog is gone _again, AGAIN_. Where’d Dog go, he wants to play, is he coming back, why isn’t he coming back. Naruto doesn’t understand, only that Dog is gone and he was here before, and he clings to Rama the next week, suspicious and anxious cuz what if Rama goes away to, what if, but no, but no, Rama will never go away. He knows this, a truth, that Rama will be forever here.

And he is —

* * *

 

He is one year old. But, even before that, through the fuzzy cloud of things he does-and-does-not remember, always Kurama, firstly Kurama. Rama is in all of his earliest memories. Rama _is_ his earliest memory. Red hair and bruise eyes and the curve of his too-serious face, time immemorial.

_And he is_

Six years old and five years old and however years old, awake in the dark night, the moon making Rama’s hair colour a burnished rust, pressing his forehead to a cooler one, red and yellow mixing, saying, like a truth known only to small children, _“Love you, love you Rama.”_ Falling over and over again, punch-pop colour in red and bruise-grey, a firework, the breath knocked from his lungs. Except this is one thing he needed not to scrape and dive for, to throw himself off a cliff for, to catch with scraped palms, this is what he was gifted: Kurama who scowls too much and reads too much and swears too much, who is Naruto’s first and best and most important _everything._

* * *

 

And he is seven years old and it is March. Monsoon rain taps a staccato tune against the pipes outside.

"We're going to Wind," says Rama.

"Kay," yawns Naruto, rolls over, doesn't even note the plural. W _e_ not _I,_ it's always been _we_ not _I_ , where would Rama even go without him, really. Nowhere, that's what. Naruto will follow him through witches and dragons and the end of the world and two thousand hundred bajillion years. Rama is Naruto's lil brother, he will never, ever leave. He pushes his cheek into a pillow, and then punch-pop loud, soda in his blood, realizes, "We're gonna see _camels?_ "

Oh cool. Oh _super, super cool_. Rama's always giving him the best things.

 

* * *

 

 

It's time for a roadtrip.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap.
> 
> I had a million and one ideas to stuff into this interlude, of which, since it was Naruto, I settled on the themes _love, people, meetings. _Naruto's a fun perspective to write from, and finally 80k later we get a POV that's not Kurama. *Clenches fists*__
> 
> __This interlude marks the end of Arc I. Arc II will be bringing you many fun things, including alternating character POVs, an actual plot, more on the other BIjuu, and a return to the slightly crackier bones of this story. TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE STUCK WITH ME FOR 80K OF INDULGENT FLUFF AND DOMESTIC FOOD SCENES AND EMOTIONAL MERRY-GO-ROUND, BLESS YOUR SOULS. To all of you whom are sick after 80k of fluff and domestic food scenes and too much emotional merry-go round, (which is mainly me, writing this thing) arc II, while certainly having much of the shenanigans that made Arc I shine, is fundamentally a ... bit of a different story. I would like to think it's a greater story, as our hero (or villain?) is finally leaving his nest and things begin to actually happen. It's a coming of age in some ways, a world-building exercise upon the Naruto universe in others, a bread and butter adventure like all the shows I loved as a kid at heart._ _
> 
> __A lot of things need to happen before I even think of posting it though, including editing _Kurama _for typos, revising my plotnotes, and setting up a chapter buffer for myself. Hopefully though, by the time June comes around I'll be ready to set up a regular posting schedule. I hoped you guys liked this story; I hoped you guys liked this chapter. It's been a pleasure writing it. Your reviews and kudos and bookmarks have made my day more than once. Thank you for all your support guys, and I hope I'll be seeing you again in the future!___ _


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